Paul Schrader interviewed remote onre-upon-a-time, and a loathing. Cat People has as much love as by David Thomson drearnscape that reminds one of Coc- sex, as much resolution as violence. The teau and The Night of the Hunter, as collaboration with visual consultant Fer- I met Paul Schrader in his office at well as Val Lewton. dinando Scarfiotti, photographer John Universal, the morning after Francis Bailey, and composer Giorgio Moroder Ford Coppola had previewed One from Psychologically, it is a lot more pro- goes far beyond the considerable the Heart in Westwood. In the very un- found than Lewton's original Cat Peo- achievement ofAmerican Gigolo . There certain state of the American picture ple, and as a narrative it seldom overlaps is an authority and grace to this film that business, Schrader had mixed feelings with the old DeWitt Bodeen story. are as exciting and as ambiguous as the about what he had seen-for Coppola's There are a few deliberate references to calm that prevails at the end. own state of mind, for a film he didn't the Jacques Tourneur film, and it's up to much like, and for all the consequences buffs to decide whether or not they sur- Paul Schrader may not be mellowing facing anyone wanting to make personal pass the shocks in the 1942 version. -he still has the snarl and the visceral films. There was also a kind of exhilara- crouch of a raging bull-but he seems to tion, for Schrader believes-with jus- Nastassia Kinski in Cat People. have found a new peace. His next proj- tice, I think-that Cat People, his new Above all, Schrader has extended the ects are Born in the U.S.A., which he will film, is the best thing he has done. And horror or exploitation genre, producing a direct, on the streets, on a low budget; since he and Coppola had both em- fantasy in which every color, every piece The Last Temptation of Christ, from Ka- ployed Nastassia Kinski, Schrader of decor, every movement, and every zantzakis, which he has written for Scor- couldn't resist the comparison that sound conjure up the sub-conscious. It's sese and De Niro-\"the last pan of the whereas she worked eighteen months a film that viewers will dream about long tryptych;\" and a film about Yukio Mi- for ten minutes in One from the Heart, afterwards, and not just with fear and shima, to be made in Japan. That's his she shot Cat People in ten weeks and plan for getting through the next few clearly establishes her potential as a ma- years, which he anticipates as a time of jor new star. Whether or not she can great turmoil in the industry. He re- learn to play American roles, she is the mains loyal to his many, conflicting nervous but sensual center of Cat Peo- roots. Who else in Hollywood would ple. Schrader evidently cares for her and, have the trade papers, a book of French during the interview, he was fussing film criticism, and the Bible on his desk? over whether a binhday present-not much smaller than a panther in a carpet How did you come to cast Nastassia -would reach her in time, in New York, Kinski? where she was making Exposed for James Toback. OK. Nastassia. Miss Kinski. Who will reach her majority on Sunday [January Cat People will not open until the first 24]. For me on this film, there was no B week of April, and Schrader was still list of actresses, there was no back-up, making color corrections and getting and I couldn't find anyone else to put on ready for sneak previews in Kansas City the A list. I had five qualifications. She and Seattle. I don't think there will be fit all five and I could not for the life of many changes. The print I saw was al- me find anyone else who did. There was ready stunning, and the film as a whole a great deal of consternation about this is a rampant, fierce entertainment- because she was still shooting One from frightening, erotic, bloody, funny, and the Heart. And I shot the first two weeks passionate. It is a study in sexual my- of my film without her, because Francis thology that boldly links New Orleans, a was still using her, and we were just bluffing our way through, hoping that Francis would finally let her go. Any- way, these five qualifications. One is we 49
needed a girl who had an international - quality, that was not parochial. Did not feel that she came from anyone place. Nastassia Kinski and Malcolm McDowell in Cat PeolJle. That had an eternal quality. Secondly, I needed a girl who was credible as a vir- fifteen years we've had a progression of which I was sinking, and there was this gin. Thirdly, I needed a girl who could actresses who have tried to cross the At- project here at Universal which they act. The last two seem contradictory: lantic. Marthe Keller, two or three wanted to make and which was purely anyone who's credible as a virgin is usu- times. Catherine Deneuve. Isabelle an exploitation thing for them. And they ally too young to act. I needed someone Huppert. Isabelle Adjani. would pay me a lot of money. And my who had a sex goddess kind of beauty. agent said, look, you just have to go to And finally, I needed someone who Are you saying that you think Nastassia work. I saw the logic in that, so I said, would face up to the nudity. You put fuck, I'll take the job. Something to me those five things on the table, that could be cast as an American? that previously was anathema. I will do throws out a lot of people. She was the Yeah, I think she can cross the line. I something totally outside my present only one who met them all, so I was just ken, that is I will do a non-realistic film unwavenng. think she is the first in decades. What about myth and magic. And it just that means is that she has to do what proved to be the tonic. An enormous Do you think she's likely to have a nar- they did back then-move here. Be- blockage was freed, I was revitalized. come part of this country and start to row range? She could retain this flawed learn street idiom and gesture. And she Don't you think sometimes people find has to study here. What I seized upon, virgin quality for a long, long time . and what Francis seized upon, is that it's themselves in prison? too early to exploit this girl as an Ameri- Oh yes . . .Yeah.Which is what I did. Not for a long, long time. They chew can. You have to go back to that pre- 'em up and spit 'em out real fast around World War II sensibility of the screen But the radicality to which this transfor- here. Today's ingenue is tomorrow's ... goddess. Exploit her as something ethe- mation occurred surprised me. And, of real. Even though the ground she walks course, without Nando [Scarfiotti] it But maybe European personalities alter on is the same as yours, she is not quite wouldn' t have happened. The Writers' real. Use her in that context, and not Guild rejected my original credit-a less? demand of her a sort of tactile film by Paul Schrader and Ferdinando This is two different subjects. It's Stanislavskyan immediacy. So I Scarfiotti. Directors' Guild OKed it. designed the film so that she could Studio OKed it. But the Writers' Guild very interesting. One of the subjects be bigger than life. To treat her as you're addressing is career manage- one of those characters of magic, wouldn't, because it impugned the role ment. What is she going to do? Ifshe lets like Dietrich was treated as something of the writer. Anyway, I really didn't them throw those huge numbers at her more than human by von Sternberg. think I was a character in this movie. I as an ingenue before she goes back in felt that I was the director and there and does at least a year of hardcore study Cat People has two male characters were these four characters. And itwasn't and stage work, she going to be burned until a couple of weeks into the show out in five years. She's going to be gone. who, I thought, both looked like you. that I realized I was one of the charac- That's all there is to it. She understands Well, to the extent that a film works, ters. I was the John Heard character-I that and she's going to start some work knew I was to a lesser degree the Paul now for Joe Papp. She has to do this to there is a transference. I came to do this character. There was an immediacy in preserve herself, and she's young film because I was blocked. I wrote five my identification with Heard that I had enough to take a year offand devote it to scripts in a year and directed three of previously blocked. So I started rewrit- her training. That's absolutely necessary them, bang-bang-bang. I stopped writ- ing the character. That's where all of a if she's going to work in the realistic ing because I was only directing. I did sudden this Beatrice imagery started American genre. Which brings us to the Raging Bull in the middle, as a favor. I coming into play. The 34-year-old, intel- second point-of European actresses. If quit Gigolo and I figured I'd go back to lectual curator, a man who prefers ani- Nastassia breaks through-and it's my writing. I thought, here it comes, step mals to people, and who is not at ease feeling she will-as an American star, aside. Well, I got over to the old Smith- with social situations, leads a kind of she'll be the first I think since Ingrid Corona, and zip. I had nothing to say, detached professional life and has al- Bergman. First European, non-English- and no desire to say it. I thought I would ways been looking for a woman worthy speaking actress. And this in the great teach, and did · My agent started importation era of Hollywood, the Wil- to sense a desperation and despair to liam Randolph Hearst mentality which was crate 'em up and send 'em over. We'll use 'em when we want to. That all came to an end with the Second World War, when we moved into the Louis de Rochemont era. We left behind the old- fashioned notion of the sex goddess, and mythology of cinema, the Parker Tyler era. The cinema, in response to the war and then in response to television, be- came much more realistic. And much more idiomatic. These foreign women -and men-lost their magic because they had to take on a street quality. It's very, very hard to translate that idiom; it takes years to learn. In the last ten or so
to put on a pedestal, and then finds her. credit at all, because I met with the into the zoo, that's in New Orleans, but Of course, the irony is that he secretly writer [Alan Ormsby), and Ire-outlined those gates are not there. We built those. wishes she were a god, an immortal, and the movie as I do, and of the forty-six When she turns the corner, into cat al- she is. He gets his dream come true, main scenes I think that there were ley, that's a matte shot. The bottom is which is parallel to her fear that if she about fifteen I wanted to keep. He un- New Orleans, the top is a painting. fucks she becomes an animal. So her derstood immediately; he's a good Then when you cut into the painting, fear and his fantasies merge. writer. He turned around, wrote it, and we cut into the back lot. Which is Well, I locked into the Heard charac- we sat down and rewrote it together. Nando's zoo. This turn-of-the-century ter this way. I realized that what I had And, having been on the other side of zoo, which the government would out- here was an intellectual, older Travis those credit wars, I said we each acted in law. That's why there's a disclaimer at Bickle. This is me and this is my Calvin- our proper functions and I am not going the end of the movie, the zoo made us istic notion of the postponement of plea- to reach in there and try to take his put that on : \"All cage scenes were shot sure and the kind of sanctity of sex credit, which I could have simply by not at Universal Studios. \" where you can really only be in love with letting him do that rewrite. The collaboration between you and something better. That's when The two male actors were your choice? Nando seems one of the most fruitful in the character of Oliver started to make Yes. Of the major characters, three I American cinema ofrecent years. sense to me. It never really had a heart immediately locked into. There was It's also fruitful at a personal level. I before. never any choice in my mind. They all think I've meant something to him per- We're talking about before shooting? accepted, even though there was a lot of sonally, and I know he's meant a lot to No, no, about a week in. When I pressure here at the studio not to use me. I guess that's what really makes a started to rewrite the character. I was Nastassia, and not to use John. An- collaboration work. It works privately as avoiding John, because I didn't really nette's role was changed at the last min- well as professionally. know what to say to him. I knew what to ute. I originally cast a black girl, Debbie Nando was the only person who could do about his weight and appearance- Allen, who was committed to do stop a scene. He was the only other take off thirty-five pounds and get him something for NBC and, even though it person besides me who could say cut. running every day. Get him off what I was not conflicting, they blocked it. He wouldn't say cut, but he would walk call the bar-stool of acting. He doesn't Then all of a sudden Annette was avail- on the set and say this is wrong, stop. want to look good. He's from the Ratso able, and she's wonderful. And we would shut down while I talked Rizzo School-how deformed can I be? to him about it-lighting, perform- McDowell is one of the very few actors Have pity on me, kind of thinking. you could have found to play that part ances. At first, the people on the crew Hardest thing in the world for someone without it being foolish. really resented that, because he's only like that is to stand up straight, look Better believe it. You have to have \"visual consultant\" and he's a foreigner. cute, and just say his lines. But I didn't somebody who can read poetry. So I But that was the way the relationship know what to tell him. Then about a preferred someone who had been worked. It's in my contract that they week in it finally hit me and I got him in trained in theater. have to agree to hire Nando. When I his trailer and I said, \"John, I've got Why New Orleans? consider the script I show it to him and good news for you. I've found out who It's the most un-American of cities. say, if you won' t do this I won't. you are. You're me, and I'm going to tell It's flown under so many flags it doesn't Let's just talk about the opening of the you now. There's no more doubt. You're know what part of the country it belongs movie, the myth world. me, and you're going to be reading from to. So it has the feeling of a town where The once upon-a-time. That's his Vita Nuova, and these are your thought anything can happen, can exist. It is a story board. That sequence is my con- patterns and this is your life.\" magical town. cept but his visualization. He comes to Were the names Paul and Oliver in the And surrounded by swamps. What me with certain alternatives. script you were given? about the zoo? Who says the sand has to be that orange? Yes. I did not contest the writing We redesigned the zoo. She walks He does. Well, he does, and I agree. The red later in the film comes out of that decision. Those sequences are clearly co-directed. It's probably being generous to myself to say that. If I were to say why wasn't the tonality in that opening . .. blue? Well, if Nando had come to me and said it was blue . .. I don't know. Maybe. It's clearly a northern Italian color, and he is from Torino. So it is the color of his childhood. The colors of my childhood are not at all orange, they're the stark white of northern Michigan. If I had been the production designer I would probably have made it all white. Be- cause that's my memory of 5 and 6 years old. But since he controls the color Nando Scarflotti and Pa~l Schrader discuss the dream sequence. scheme of the whole movie, I went with his childhood, which is the colors of the 51
Mediterranean, and more magic and but not that style. People would see it as with her? soulful than Protestant white. old-fashioned. It has to be a post-Berto- lucci style, because I think for most of No. That is a kind of perverted impli- The interior ofthe zoo is a quite intricate my generation The Conformist is the cation, but there is 00 true bestiality in arrangement ofoffices and cages . No zoo seminal film. That was the marriage we the film. I mean, he doesn't take the could tolerate it. had to make: the feeling of Orpheus and leopard out to the jetty house and tie her the style of The Conformist. to the bed and bang her. No, he has set God, no. It would be insanity. up his own little chapel and he goes in There's what I call my devo shot-my The music is as interesting as it was in every day and lights a candle. He has his de-evolution shot, which is: you're on Gigolo. Beatrice and he has his shrine. On the the exterior and she's sketching, then other hand, the movie doesn't quite end you drop down and you're with three It is very important that the gigolo there. It goes back to her and she has the characters, and you dolly and they exit, sing to you with the voice of a masculine final word, and she does sing to him, \"I you boom down to chimpanzees, you female, and that Iraina sing to you in the could stare for a thousand years and boom down to a cheetah, and then you voice of a feminine male. So that, at the don't you feel my blood enraged?\" You pick up your characters again. end, when she sings to you it's through know, I may be behind bars, but you're the voice of a man. also behind bars. Then the leopard There's a fluidity to the movement and growls. the space. Simone Simon in the 1942 Cat People. When Nastassia and Heard first meet, The audience has to understand that And in Giorgio Moroder's music there's there's a kind ofirrational whoriness in the the camera acts independently of the a pounding and that swimming feeling actors. Therefore there is another force qgain. way she acts. Quite unlike the virginal hovering over this movie. Be it the di- face. rector, be it magic, be it God, there is I'm a voracious music listener and I some other thing watching these peo- spend a lot of time thinking what music Because she was so young, her face ple. You make the audience aware that is right for a scene. Then I cut all those would literally change from day to day. I the camera will not necessarily do what pieces in, and present the tape to Gior- the actors want it to do. gio and I say, all these pieces are right for could really tell how much sleep she'd me. Now you make it a whole. Giorgio had, or how close to her period she was. I remember once on set we were do- appreciates that. One of the rea- Some days she physically looks different ing a tracking shot. Now, a dolly grip is sons he hasn't done too many films is from others, and I tried to orchestrate just as important as a camera operator. that when they offer him films they that. You could give her a certain meal We had a new dolly grip and he was don't know what they want. on a certain night and know she would doing what you're supposed to do, mov- come out looking differently. ing with the actors. And I said to him, I would guess that you became more you are not working for them, you are and more fascinated with cats during the And when she's naked, she has a Euro- working for me. You will work at a con- film. peanfigure. stant speed, I tell you the speed, and I don't care if we have to back-pan. We I'm allergic to cats. Cannot stand cats. Absolutely! We were sitting in dailies, have our speed, they have theirs, the If a cat sits on my arm, literally, hives and Nando was watching. First nude operator has to struggle to make them will break out. I had to take care I took scene we did, Nando said, \"You know match, so you' re what I call swimming. my pills when we worked with a cat. what's great about this? She has such a Obviously, I'm attracted to their kind of European body.\" I hadn't really thought Do you think so-called exploitation mythic beauty, but I've always had dogs of it that way, because I hadn't had that movies can get deeper into psychic truth and I'm much more akin to the bond a much experience with European than psychological explorations that seem person has with a dog than to the aloof women. more serious? respect one has for a cat. What I want from a pet is somebody to sleep with. I What are the most important things that Difference between day dreams and don't want somebody to sit across the herfather has given her? night dreams. In the past I've been deal- room and stare at me. ing with day dreams. This film is what Well, I can talk about the good things. the unconscious tells you. You know that At the end of the film are we meant to He gave her an invaluable gift as a child, quote that lung had carved over his think that perhaps he continues to have sex he taught her to be a performer, a jug- house in Switzerland, from Erasmus, \"Called or uncalled, God will be there.\" gler, a laugher, a dancer, a show person. And called or uncalled, the panther, the white horse, and the snake will come Greatest freedom a parent can give a into your dreams. And you can't stop it, child. Whatever other things he gave her for they have existed before you. Ever should be confined to the analyst's since we crawled out of the swamp, or couch. I happen to believe very strongly came down from the trees. Working at in the analytic method. It has saved my finding the truth of night dreams, the life, literally, over the years. The boy exploitation genre does give you some who was once The Taxi Driver, who wrote freedoms. My concept was that the time that script and thought it was a logical was right to get back to a pre-nouvelle script, the Mark Chapman I used to be, vague spirit, of those guys who did be- that. .. you know, I'm very prone to ad- lieve in magic-Welles, Franju, Coc- dictive patterns and behavior primarily teau, people who believed cinema was of the self-destructive sort.I've no doubt myth, before realism and didacticism that were it not for the analytic process took over. I said, let's capture that spirit, over the years, I would have fallen prey to some form of self-destructive behav- ior. Nastassia,like all of us, needs to go through some similar form ofself-exami- nation . ~ S2
scarsr ********************by Myron Meisel There's no denying the immense cul- remained steady in recent years. A pe- tural role played by the Oscars, or their rusal of the membership roster reveals The Oscars are such a fundamental potential economic impact. Key Oscars that there is still a significant portion of part of our experience of movies that we can mean new life for a played-out re- older, often retired members. In 1974 are often oblivious to how much the an- lease or give a movie its real break in the there was a concerted effort commenced nual ritual shapes the rhythms of our marketplace. (The Deer Hunter could not to attract younger members and to pen- filmgoing, a tribal rite that apotheosizes have succeeded without its Oscars, sion off those retirees without personal a year's production and enables us to though the two awards copped by clout to the non-voting status of associ- move forward with another cycle of crea- MeLvin and Howard couldn' t goose its ate membership. The result was a tem- tion and appreciation. Even so, for all box office beyond the paltry $Z-million pering of the Academy's conservative their sacred trappings , the Academy rental mark.) Studios wage expensive wing and, probably, the improvement in Awards, like the industry they cele- advertising and promotional campaigns the caliber of the nominations in recent brate, approach the issue of quality with for nominations. It's unlikely that nomi- years. Predictably, the purge met with an ambivalence that no amount of robust nations, let alone Oscars, can be bought: resistance, and since each of the twelve self-congratulation can mask. Most peo- The ALamo being a conspicuous past ex- branches of the Academy exercises sub- ple love the Oscars, standing in awe of ample, though it is equally probable that stantial autonomy over questions of their power; but I don't know anyone- the failure to promote a contender can membership, several successfully re- in the industry or on the outside-who harm its chances. Columbia this year is belled, notably the cinematographers, a takes them seriously as guarantors of making the most aggressive push, on particularly clubby and loyal bunch, and merit. There's no question that the behalf of Absence ofMaLice. It received the actors branch, which maintained overall caliber of nominations has deci- three nominations , less than half the that an actor remains capable of working sively improved since the Sixties; truly number for Ragtime or Chariots ofFire. again unless permanently retired. • embarrassing selections, such as Dr. It's popularly assumed that all persons DooLittLe as a Best Picture nominee, are For all that is written about the Oscars nominated for Oscars are routinely ad- now rare. Still, the awards themselves each year, the inner workings of the mitted to the Academy, but it isn't nec- haven't appreciably thrown off the tinge awards process are often glossed over in essarily so. Ryan O'Neal , for example, of philistinism, and it's a coincidence if the official explanations. So it might be was nominated in 1970 but not admitted and when a stray statuette is actually interesting to explore just how the until 1980. The roster of directors does awarded to the best of anything in any choices presented to Academy members not include Sam Peckinpah, Elia Kazan, year. It's significant that the Oscars are reach their place on the ballot. First, or Orson Welles (nor is Welles a member treated more as a sporting race, in which however, let's examine just who makes of the Actors Branch), though it does list acumen at predicting winners is valued up the membership of the august body. the likes of Herbert L. Strock, Lee H. more highly than rooting that the best Currentl y there are 3,813 voting Katzin, Allen Baron, Anton Leader, and entry win. members, a tally that has approximately the immortal Spencer Gordon Bennet. S3
And while the cinematographers bership rules somewhat fluid. They've Sound Effects Editing, or brand-new Make-up awards,which are done by var- haven't pruned their ranks, they have come a long way from 1936, when voting ious procedures through committees. In these areas, the workings of the Acad- stretched more than they are given was opened up to all contract players at emy are most mysterious. Forty or more features might be submitted to the Doc- credit for, in adding such new blood as the studios making more than $60 per umentary committee for consideration, and that committee is infamous for turn- Willy Kurant, Michel Hugo, Jordan week, enabling the majors to line up ing off pictures after ten minutes if sev- eral members vocally request it. Cronenweth, and Vilis Lapenieks. (Gor- their troops in support of the house Opening up the category to 16mm films that have been selected for inclusion in don Willis is not among them: he may product. • major film festivals has enriched the quality of contending titles, but the have shot the Godfather films , but the passing over of substantial and impor- tant works (such as Marcel Ophuls' The guild hierarchy doesn't quickly forget Everyone knows that the nomina- Memory ofJustice) in favor of heartwarm- ing entertainment value has not done intramural squabbles.) Grace Kelly, de- tions in each category are made by the the category justice. spite more than a quarter century's ab- members of the corresponding branch. • sence from the screen, remains an active Not everyone knows that the voting for The Foreign Language category has been most subject to controversy in past member of the Actors Branch, and I nominees is done on a weighted basis, note some curious additions to the mem- with each voter listing his choices-five bership in recent years that do smack of or fewer-in the order of preference. special sponsorship rather than compli- Individuals with more than one con- ance with the professed standards of the tending achievement do compete Academy (newcomer relatives of indus- against themselves, since it is the try heavyweights). Significantly, next to achievement, and not the person, which the actors branch, the largest number by is selected. (The reminder lists include far composes the miscellaneous group of no names except for those of the titles Members at Large, who belong to no and the actors; all balloting is done by Still voting: Grace Kelly. Not voting: cinematographer Gordon Willis and actor-director Orson Welles. specific craft category and are obviously picture title except for acting.) The act- years, and despite numerous rules a substantial factor in any final ing and cinematography awards pre- changes, the situation has barely im- voting. There's also a well-populated clude any person being nominated for proved. Basically, individual countries segment of non-voting Associate Mem- more than one achievement per cate- submit one film each for consideration gory per year; multiple nominations are by the Foreign Language Film Commit- bers including many prominent attor- possible in other categories. Though the tee, which selects five nominees. That is neys and agents, along with such unclas- differentiation between leading and the largest committee of the Academy, sifiables as Dr. Aaron Stern, George supporting roles is 'made by individual with about 150 members. Each con- \"Bullets\" Durgom, and the nun who voters, the studios use their advertising tending title is screened once, so such was once known as Dolores Hart. to determine the suitable category for a matters as screening scheduling can be performance in their films. This year, critical. A Sunday afternoon will draw The Academy does rightly pride itself Howard E. Rollins in Ragtime is being more committee members than a on its exclusivity and it makes strenuous touted as a supporting actor, and Susan Wednesday night, unless there's a Super efforts to preserve that image. Recently, Sarandon in Atlantic City was also ear- Bowl game competing for the attention. apparently deluged with requests for marked for supporting status. Actually, This year, in order to vote, a committee membership in the producers branch, it the creation of some consensus on these member is required to see at least 80 announced tightened restrictions, dis- problems of classification is essential, percent of the competing titles, which qualifying any credits such as \"Co- since varying opinions only split the con- total between twenty and twenty-five. Producer,\" \"Associate Producer,\" tender's votes. \"Executive Producer,\" or \"Produced in Though the list of competing titles is Association With,\" accepting only sole The general membership does not se- publicized, it's also quickly forgotten. or shared screen credit as \"Producer.\" It lect the Documentary, Short Film, For- Over the years there have been many helps to remember that in the Thirties eign Language Film, Visual Effects, surprising omissions: in 1959, both The the Academy was quite small, and mem- 54
World ofApu and Nazarin; in 1965 both Revenge of the Stanley Kramers Gertrud and Pierrot le Fou. Admittedly, many countries don't always select with Kids may be the only ones going to the movies these days-turning the an eye toward likely nomination, most titles Raiders ofthe Lost Ark, Superman 1/, and Stripes into 1981's biggest hits notably in the case of France and Mar- -but it's their Bel Air and Beve rl y Hills parents who pick the Oscars. Thus guerite Duras' India Song , which so infu- the domination in the major award categories of \"adult\" films with a liberal riated committee members that several slant. And thus the challenge to our panel of critics and industry analysts: to prominent persons spent the entire pick which revisionist historical epic, which heart-tugging personal drama , screening trying to get the film prema- will win the big prizes . These predictions (not preferences) were made turely turned off. Paul Verhoeven's Sol- within days of the nomin ation s' announcement. You have until March 29. dier of Orange was passed over, only to win the Los Angeles Film Critics' Award Best Picture Best Actor the next year, after it had been released. Atlantic City, Paramount Warren Beatty, Reds Last Year at Marienbad was passed over Chariots ofFire, Ladd-Warners Henry Fonda, On Golden Pond even as it was being nominated for a screenplay award. Federico Fellini, a (DA, AS) (ALL 8) perennial Academy favorite, was nomi- nated for Best Director in 1970, but his On Golden Pond, lTC-Universal Burt Lancaster, Atlantic City film , Fellini Satyricon, was snubbed, as Dudley Moore, Arthur Fellini's Roma would be two years later. (SB, AH) Paul Newman, Absence ofMalice Ingmar Bergman saw The Seventh Seal and The Magician rejected before he Raiders ofthe Lost Ark, Paramount Best Actress won the award twice, and after that, The Reds, Paramount (LB, RE, TM, MM) Katharine Hepburn, On Golden Pond Silence , Persona, and Shame were all Diane Keaton , Reds (SB, RE, AH, deemed unworthy of nomination, even Best Director though they too won many critics' Warren Beatty, Reds (DA, LB, SB, AH, TM, MM) awards. Francesco Rosi's Lucky Luciano was declared ineligible by the commit- TM, MM) Marsha Mason, Only When I Laugh tee after its screening, as was A Dream of Susan Sarandon, Atlantic City Passion, the latter because not enough Hugh Hudson, Chariots ofFire (AS) Meryl Streep, The French Lieutenant's dialogue was in a foreign tongue. (The Louis Malle, Atlantic City (RE) solution: dub and then subtitle.) Mark Rydell , On Golden Pond Woman (DA, LB, AS) Steven Spielberg, Raiders There have also been famous contre- temps over disqualification. Bergman's Best Cinematography Best Supporting Actor Scenes from a Marriage was withheld Miroslav Ondricek, Ragtime (AS) James Coco, Only When I Laugh because it played in a different form on Douglas Siocombe, Raiders John Gielgud, Arthur Swedish television in 1973 instead of Vittorio Storaro, Reds (DA, LB, SB, 1974. This year, Brazil's Pixote, the pick (ALL 8) of both the Los Angeles and New York RE , AH, TM, MM) Ian Holm, Chariots ofFire critics, has been disqualified from For- Jack Nicholson, Reds eign Language contention on the basis Alex Thomson, Excalibur Howard E. Rollins, Jr., Ragtime of two one-week preliminary runs a Billy Williams, On Golden Pond month before the cutoff date of Novem- ber 1, 1980. Meanwhile, one day before Best Original Screenplay Best Supporting Actress the Jaruzelski military takeover in Po- Warren Beatty and Trevor Griffiths, Melinda Dillon, Absence ofMalice land, that country's nominee was spec- Jane Fonda, On Golden Pond tacularly switched from the officially Reds (LB, SB) Joan Hackett, Only When I Laugh safe Chills to Andrzej Wajda's Solidarity- John Guare, Atlantic City (DA, Elizabeth McGovern, Ragtime supporting Man ofIron . This change did Maureen Stapletdn, Reds not comply with Academy Rule Four- RE, AH, TM, MM) teen (four) which requires that \"a syn- (ALL 8) opsis in English must be received in the Steve Gordon, Arthur (AS) Academy Office with the official entry Kurt Luedtke, Absence ofMalice blank no later than Thursday, Novem- Colin Weiland, Chariots ofFire ber 12, 1981,\" since the telegram from Film Polski requesting the change was Best Adapted Screenplay Best Foreign Film not received until December 11. Ac- Jay Presson Allen & Sidney Lumet, The Boat Is Full, Switzerland cording to an Academy spokesman, the executive director of the Academy re- Prince ofthe City (DA, SB) ferred the matter to the Foreign Lan- Harold Pinter, The French Lieuten- guage Committee, which \"bent the Man ofIron, Poland (LB, RE, AH. rules a little\" to allow the substitution. I ant's Woman (AS, RE) don't argue there's anything wrong with Dennis Potter, Pennies from Heaven TM, MM, AS) bending the rules a little in the case of Ernest Thompson, On Golden Pond Mephisto, Hungary (DA, LB , SB, AH , TM , MM) Muddy River, Japan Three Brothers, Italy Michael Weller, Ragtime DAVIDANSE N, Newsweek; ROGER EBERT, The Chicago Sun-Times; ALJEAN HARMETZ, The New York Times; TODD MCCARTHY, Variety; ANDREW SARRIS, The Village Voice; and industry analysts LEE BEAUP RE , STUART BYRON, and MYRON MEISEL. 55
fimp/g Div~! Man of Iron, only that it's arbitrary and inconsistent to take an excessively literal SHOCK VALUE approach to the same rules in the case of Pixote. A Tasteful Book About Bad Taste The Academy has tried many formu- by the Creator of Pink Flamingos and Polyester lae to solve its Foreign Language prob- lems. Until 1974 it allowed the JOHN WATERS committee to supplement the official submissions from foreign countries with Finally all the classic characters you've come to know its own selections, although I can't find and loathe on the screen-the outrageous Divine, Edie any record of that ever actually occur- the Egg Lady, the infamous Dreamlanders-are immor- ring. For a while, it experimented with talized between the covers of Waters' unabashedly limiting nominees to films that did not entertaining autobiography. \"Finally the truth behind play Los Angeles between April and the glamour....SHOCK VALUE is funny, informative, April to avoid giving commercially re- and suffused with boyish charm.\"-Fran Lebowitz, leased titles an unfair advantage. That author of Metropolitan Life and Social Studies only wreaked havoc with the openings of foreign films. The new rule, limiting $9,95 Delta Books final voting to those members who have AFCDELTA BOOKS Dell Publishinq Co., Inc. seen all five nominees, has ended that Dell-Montville Warehouse PO. Box 2000 ~ preference, allowing savvy internal cam- paigns such as those for Moscow Does Pine Brook, New Jersey 07058-2000 Not Believe in Tears or Black and White in Color to succeed against major studio Please send me paperback copies of SHOCK releases. (In fact, last year only about 250 VALUE @ $9.95 each, plus $1 .50 per book for postage and people were present for the most sparsely attended of Foreign-Language handling. I am enclosing a check or money order for nominees, which, added to the commit- tee members, would mean only about $ and understand that delivery will take 6-8 450 people could vote in this category, making it theoretically possible that weeks. fewer than one hundred votes could de- termine a winner. I hesitate to guess _NAM~E _______________________________ how few people vote for Documentary Feature, since it is more likely that con- ADDRESS,_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ __ _ scientious voters will see all foreign- language films or all shorts before they CITY ______________STATE _____ ZIP' _______ catch up with all documentary features.) Residenl sof N.'<. N.J.. III.. ond Co .. pleose odd applicable sales lox. The Academy ought to reform its eli- gibility rules to avoid arbitrary exclu- sions of films in the Foreign Language category. This could be simply accom- plished by allowing countries to submit films that either opened in the home- land during the yearly period or in the Los Angeles area during the year past. That would avoid the embarrassment of having an official selection bounced' on technicalities that bear no rational rela- tion to the award. Sweden refused to submit any film in the year after Scenes from a Marriage was scratched, and such talmudic distinctions only hurt the cred- ibility of the award, particularly when the rules can indeed be \"bent\" to favor a Man ofIron. Then again, what can you expect of awards that originally, in 1928, included a category of \"Most Artistic Quality of Production\" in addition to \"Best Pic- ture,\" only to eliminate the category thereafter? The winner that year was Sunrise, and there hasn't been a more distinguished winner since.~!]. 56
Costa-Gavras interviewed The 49-year-old Greek-born director This sense of reserve should not be in- has always felt comfortable with shock terpreted as coldness. It is, instead, a by Dan Yakir editing and a breathless pace-qualities conviction that issues are worth discus- that make him close in temperament to sing more than his own personal feel- From his 1964 debut, The Sleeping American cinema and help explain the ings. In his last two films, though , he has Car Murders, to his current film , Miss- commercial success most of his films en- started dealing with intimate personal ing, Costa-Gavras has proved himself a joyed here. But the action and the spec- relationships-with fragile , vulnerable master technician, directing films that tacle serve as brightly colored containers individuals in search of themselves and mix political awareness with dramatic for bitter truths that pertain, in his of the truth. This is as true of Romy thrills. While some critics found a cer- words, to \"the human condition.\" His Schneider and Yves Montand in Clair de tain coldness, a manipulative tendency, films have attacked the repressive poli- femme as it is of Jack Lemmon and Sissy and a lack of character development in cies of Greeks (Z, 1969), Communists Spacek in Missing. his work, most recognized an intelligent (The Confession, 1970), Americans (State sophistication and human decency at ofSiege, 1973), and Frenchmen (Special The director himself finds it \" hard to work under the dazzling technical ex- Section, 1975). However politically in- offer solutions\" when it comes to politi- pertise. flammatory these slam-bang essays in cal-or cinematic-issues. His second muckraking may seem, their director is film, Shock Troops (Un homme de trap, above all a humanist who believes 1966), about a group of Resistance strongly in the value of an indivi- fighters who discover that there is a spy dual act. among them, was described in Cahiers du Cinema as having \"the first true sus- Costa-Gavras' six pictures prior to pended ending in the history of cinema\" Clairdefemme (1979) were populated by large casts and by characters that some- because the identity of the man is never times were more interesting as symbols revealed. In Special Section, he shot the than as individuals. They also held few climactic subway assassination scene ofa substantial roles for women. And it must Nazi official by a group of young ideal- be said that the director, outgoing and ists in slow motion, a technique that affable in person , is far from comfortable didn't contribute to suspense. \"These when called upon to reveal himself. kids weren't professional killers, which is why those moments seemed intermi- 57
nabIe to them,\" he explains. \"Since cause it's dramatically strong, but it's from liberal. People haven't always no- ticed it, but in Z, for example, the judge there was no psychological delving into also a part of daily life. And the same [Jean-Louis Trintignant] is a conserva- tive. In Special Section, the most posi- their characters, that was the only way to goes for lyricism. In the late Sixties, tive character is the rightist judge [Hubert Gignoux]. I think this separa- convey what they were going through. \" there was a tendency to kill lyricism, to tion exists in society as a vector-a per- manent seed of civil strife-but A graduate of the Paris film school destroy romanticism for the more direct insisting on it removes one away from the truth. IDHEC, Costa-Gavras planned his first materialism of everyday reality. It was To change society is an absolute must films by \"preparing everything ahead of the time of the Great Truth, and after- -it's almost a biological need-but it must be gradual. The Russian Revolu- time-until I realized that daily circum- ward there was a need for poetry and tion liquidated millions of people to achieve a lamentable result, not at all stances forced me to change things. So lyricism. I think it's essential. You can't what had originally been intended. And the conservatives, who want to change now I prepare much less. \" The exceed- live with the material only. nothing, have a negative attitude too. They're both stupid. ingly mobile camera that has become his Clair de femme was your most lyrical Reason and ideology don't often coin- trademark \"serves a dramatic function film. cide. and stems naturally out of the story.\" He Probably. I allowed myself to go all It's much too easy to bypass reason. It deprives you of the comfort that you get says that his collaboration as assistant- the way, but many people didn't under- by just following dogma. director with Rene Clement, Rene stand it. It was an attempt to talk about Do you see cinema as a tool of social change? Clair, Jacques Demy, Marcel Ophuls, death as an acceptable daily presence- Film should serve as a mirror to soci- and Henri Verneuil has influenced him, by which I mean romanticism. ety, to make people think, to be a refer- ence source-but to change it is a bit too but his fully-formed sensibility is The last image in Missing is a coffin. demanding. uniquely his own. Death is a fascinating subject. Cultur- I make films based on true stories. It's not dramatic fiction. I take political and Missing , which was shot in Mexico on ally, we're not at all prepared to deal historical themes and organize them dra- matically, while obeying the rules of a budget of $9 million, is perhaps his with it. We live with the idea that some- spectacle. It's a good vehicle to intro- duce such stories to the largest possible most gripping picture since Z. In it he how we'll manage to avoid it, so nothing public. Now, I made The Confession for an audience that was already politicized. blends old concerns with a new personal prepares us for it. Yet it's the most cer- Indeed, in the U.S., it didn't do- couldn't do-anything, while Z was a sensitivity to create what is perhaps the tain thing of all. When I was young, I great success. best, mature, overtly political American And State of Siege? Stage ofSiege was to start as a policier: film in years. -D.Y. a man is kidnaped. The question is, will they shoot him or not? It could have How did Missing come about-as an been much too simple, so I decided to show from the outset that he was dead- American project? so the audience would not be too ab- sorbed with the question of whether he To make an American film is the would live or die, but instead follow the situation. It invites more cold examina- dream of every European filmmaker. I tion, less emotion. What guidelines did you use in the con- have often been offered projects by Hol- struction ofMissing? I tried to never bring the violence to lywood, but I couldn't accept them the forefront, but keep it in the back- ground. It wasn't easy, because one al- without first living here and getting to ways wants to show a more direct impact. I had to restrain myself. Another know the place, like Milos Forman. I guideline was to remain as close as possi- ble to the truth of each character, even kept turning down films; The Godfather the \"bad guys.\" I tried to see the point- of-view of the ambassador [Richard Ven- was one. ture] and the consul [David Clennon], Then one day I was sent Thomas Hauser's book based on the true story of Charles Horman, the American who dis- Costa-Gavras. appeared in Latin America. My first in- stinct was not to offer it to an American didn't think about it; but with age it has studio, because the subject was too in- become a constant preoccupation. The flammatory, too violently political. But ideal thing would be to be able to really Universal has been asking me for several experience one's own death. years to make my kind of film for them, In Clair de femme, you examine the so when Edward Lewis, the producer, power relationship within the couple. approached me, I decided to go with it. I It's always about power. The film is felt that the problem of disappearing about the need to exercise power over people was very important as an unveil- someone and the need to form a cell of ing of the increasingly vicious methods two-man alone is a biologically useless that so many governments practice. cell. The rapport of force, of submis- Now instead of imprisoning the oppo- sion, assumes that one member of the nent or killing him, they make him dis- cell is more necessary than the other, appear, which brings incredible anguish which is false. This is political: accept- to those who love him. ing someone as an equal is a political The first script I was sent wasn't what attitude. I wanted and the producers agreed that I The malejemale duel is present in work on it with John Nichols. Since my Missing too-between Ed Horman {Jack English isn't excellent, I used an Ameri- Lemmon], who comes to search for his can writer and I could think of nobody son, and Beth {Sissy Spacek] , his daugh- better than the author of Magic City and ter-in-law. It goes beyond the clash oftheir Nirvana Blues to do it, although he had respective conservatism and liberalism. never written for film before. Yes, until they unite. But I never be- Action has been abused in films, be- lieved in the separation ot conservative 58
the reason they behave the way they do. the wall just as in Z we saw that of the purest image, and in a situation like this But surely you show the indifference of Greek Queen-as a mute accusation . You even it is pursued-for no reason. Since seem to refer to previous regimes to imply soldiers there have a right to shoot indis- the American authorities to the plight of that plus ~a change ... criminately, when they return to the bar- Charles' father and wife. racks at night they can't sleep. They There's that element, but it's also true want to go out to continue the hunt that Yes, but it's not mechanical. They had to the reality depicted . Missing took fascinates them so much. to keep the whole affair from exploding, place in Nixon's time. so they denied everything. It would The film isfull ofbright colors that don't have been easy to manipulate the am- And in Chile. reflect the anguish ofthe protagonists. bassador as the bad guy-to choose Yes, though for most people it'll sim- someone who looked like a real heavy. ply be Latin America-the situation is I asked Ricardo Aronovich not to When the senator [Hansford Rowel dis- no less applicable to, say, EI Salvador. dramatize the photography but to show cusses Horman's problem while walking But it was indeed Nixon's responsibility the sun, to make it bright, almost cheer- in the corridor, he is not meant to be a -his and Kissinger's, who lies incredi- ful. I wanted the drama to emerge not caricature, but to show how alone Hor- bly in his book. It was his responsibility out of such means, not out of technique. man IS. for the destruction of Chile, no less than of Cambodia. How do you work with actors? Horman is the mouthpiece for the Wasn't the studio worried about the ref- I try to know them ahead of time. I parents, wives, and children of those erence to a previous conservative govern- discuss everything with them, but then who disappear-there are thirty-one ment, especially in these Moral Majority give them freedom to develop their own countries where this is happening-who days? interpretations until they evolve into find themselves completely alone. The Jack Lemmon's character says in the their characters. despair of these people is horrible. Peo- end of the movie: \"Thank God we're For Missing, I thought right away of ple can accept death, because it's irrevo- Sissy Spacek. There are very few ac- Terrorism in S~a~e of Siege and... . . .Montand and Schneider in Clair de femme. cable, but disappearing is an abstraction living in a country where we can put tresses who could have played this role. -and you can't accept the uncertainty. people like you in jail.\" It's true-think She's wonderful-not at all a star in the The relatives of the disappeared are bro- of Haldeman, Ehrlichman... I almost negative sense of the word. She's always ken people-the combination of hope wanted to add an epilogue such as uncertain, which I like. She comes to and anguish is completely destructive. \"Thank God we can still make films like the set with questions, not answers. this in this country.\" There aren't too Since I feel the same way about my own In Missing, as in your previous work, many countries in the world in which work, it was easy to have a dialogue with you use a lot of flashbacks. Especially you can do that. Special Section was re- her. interesting is the swift superimposition of ceived with extreme coldness in France an image and its subsequent elimination in -it touched a painful spot, especially Then we chose Jack Lemmon. I like the reconstruction ofthe kidnaping. since the judicial system in the country counter-casting. I've often cast against hasn't changed much since the Forties. type. In Special Section, I took comic Yes, it's to demonstrate the uncer- Same goes for films about the harsh actors like Michel Galabru, Pierre Dux, tainty of the information Horman gets. treatment of the Jews during the Occu- and Claude Pieplu and gave them dra- The details are changed, which renders pation. By contrast, in America I see a even the essential uncertain. I like the quality of regeneration. matic roles. In Z, I cast Marcel Bozzufi flashback-to start with an image that as a homosexual-and he is the macho only later proves to be a look at the past One of the most haunting images in of French cinema, our Burt Lancaster -it takes the spectator by surprise. I'm Missing is that of a white horse galloping and Kirk Douglas all in one. And he was fascinated by the rapport between past at dawn, away from pursuing soldiers . astonishing. and present, In fact, I wanted to make Missing a film where the distinction be- It's hard to explain. I tried to make it Jack Lemmon liked the script. He tween the two is totally impossible. like a dream, a nightmare, to show the just said, \"Tell me what to do and I'll do horror of violence. A white horse is the it.\" I didn't have to say much. He un- In Missing, we see Nixon's picture on derstood the character very well. ti;' 59
Seventh Annual Grosses Gloss by Myron Meisel Can), or a fantasy adventure (like the proach to which films play well in which year's winner, Raiders of the Lost Ark). seasons? \"The rest of the marketplace is No question: Every time Hollywood Not a single other genre is represented. critical,\" observes Marvin Antonowsky, holds a Going Out of Business sale, The most successful film that falls out- president of marketing at Columbia, there are enough hopeful entrepreneurs side the comedy-action-fantasy spec- \"but you can't control the release sched- around to keep the place in business. In trum is Endless Love, number 22 on the ules of other companies.\" the past year, four of the top seven film chan with $15.1 million in rentals. All companies were changing hands. Oil- this makes for bleak reading. Other disturbing trends continued. man Marvin Davis purchased 20th Cen- The average picture cost $11.3 million tury-Fox; MGM swallowed United Consider this: The annual top- to produce and $7-9 million to publicize, Artists, then merged with it; Norman grossing films from 1970 to 1979 were making fewer projects seem wonh the Lear's T.A. T. Communications ab- Airport, Fiddler on the Roof, The Godfa- risk. Indeed, the whole procedure was sQrbed Avco-Embassy; and Coca-Cola ther, The Exorcist, Blazing Saddles, Jaws, growing too expensive to bring the in- announced plans to acquire Columbia Rocky, Star Wars, Grease, and Kramer vs. dustry a profit through domestic theatri- Pictures. (In the meantime, ailing Kramer-two dramas, two horror cal release. The amount spent on new movies, two musicals, a disaster picrure, production by the majors-just over $1 Warner Bros.' Superman II. a gangster movie, a comedy, and a fan- billion-was roughly equivalent to the Filmways, a spinster angling for her last tasy. Even in the past two years, when chance, presented its dowry to Orion.) comedy and fantasy have dominated the Worst The new buyers all anticipate a boom box office, other kinds of films per- several years hence in the software busi- formed impressively, like Rocky II and Paramount's Reds. ness. But the \"software\" (movies) must Coal Miner's Daughter. It is still possible still find its immediate audience (the for a serious drama to turn a profit- amount taken In as Income moviegoer). And the studios' marketing especially when, as with Kramer and Or- people must still play high-stakes poker dinary People, it is goosed with Oscar c1uding reissues). The same was true for with the cards they're dealt. statuettes-but the odds are growing( the smaller \"independents.\" And so the In 1981, most of the best cards were longer, and the risk less supportable. jokers. Variety's annual tabulation of industry must look for profits from for- U.S.-Canadian \"rentals\" (the distribu- The alternative is even gloomier:( tor's cut of a film's gross take) shows that making only two or three genres of film ' eign distribution to recoup domestic each of last year's top twenty releases targeted only at the largest ponion of the . was either a comedy (like the sleeper of audience. The occasional moviegoer marketing costs, and to take its profit '81, Arthur), an action comedy (like will be ignored; the size and scope of the Clint Eastwood's Any Which Way You market will shrink; and the glut ofcome- margin from foreign and ancillary mar- dies and fantasy-adventures will devour themselves in competing for the dollars kets, including network, syndicated, that remain. The film industry is un- likely to forsake a somewhat varied re- and pay television. For the moment, lease schedule; if Warren Beatty wants to make a movie of Godel, Escher, Bach these outside markets will determine someone will give him the money. But the climate for diversity in filmmaking the profitability of the industry. But has never been less hospitable. even that profit can be eaten away if The studios have no one to blame but themselves. In each of 1981's last three costs rise faster than the ancillary mar- quaners, they released a pack of similar pictures that had to claw for a piece of kets expand-which has been the case the same market. First the school's-out fantasy-adventures; then the fall line of so far, and will be for the immediate women's pictures; then the Christmas coffee-table movies and deep-think future. dramas. In the autumn and winter fire sales, most pictures flopped-and many Production costs are amenable to con- might have performed better had they not all opened at once. What's the solu- tion? A canel? Or a less dogmatic ap- 60
trois; you choose pictures and stars, and into the theaters. Superman /I boasted fix budgets, more carefully. But market- ing costs are more resistant, since media superb spots and trailer. TIme Bandits, ARAB costs are determined by others. When the fall's top-grossing new film , used TV the networks' and newspapers' rate spots that established that the film was cards go up, so do costs. \"Costs won't fantasy, not science fiction , and this was CAPITAL level off as long as film companies de- essential to its immediate success. cide not to reduce the amount of adver- tising they buy,\" contends Gabe Then there's the exposure money AVAILABLE \"-/ Sumner, President of the Distribution can't buy, but a good publicist can help Division of CBS Theatrical Films and ..,------------~~ former marketing boss for Orion Pic- create: media coverage. The Four Sea- tlues. \"The only way to level off mar- sons wasn't hurt by the presence of Alan We have a list of keting costs is to reduce lineage and Aida's face on virtually every women's rating points. \" magazine just before the film's release. Won't that decrease marketing effec- The Newsweek and Time cover stories on potential clients tiveness? Not necessarily. Virtually ev- Raiders positioned it as the upscale (as ery marketing executive I spoke ' with expressed a certain awe for the propen- well as broadscale) summer hit-to-be. from all over the sity of the public to ferret out the pic- Sally Field's appearance on 20120, and tures it wanted to see while shunning others. \"Very often the public seems to the continuing debate over journalistic Arab world who smell out the hit films even before the integrity, kept Absence of Malice in the first ads for them appear,\" noted one. Another executive argued that \"The informed public eye through the first have shown role of advertising today is very limited months of its release. But publicity in comparison with previous years. More and more dollars do not result in more doesn't always make a difference. Put- interest in and more business. We can't even buy ting Meryl Streep on the cover of Time , an audience the way we used to. \" or Elizabeth McGovern on Newsweek, • didn ' t turn The French Lieutenant's promoting, Woman or Ragtime into an instant hit. How can advertising and marketing become more efficient? Greater em- Blake Edwards won headlines in his funding, buying phasis can be placed on the use of free fight with Paramount over S.O .B ., and space (i.e., publicity) and other areas, including merchandising. With a long Jessica Lange delivered Mikhail Bary- and investing in lead time, Richard Kahn's regime at shnikov's baby just as The Postman AL- MGM-UA was able to create a strong complement of promotions for Clash of ways Rings Twice was preparing to make all sorts of real the TItans, part of a blitz that helped it to its rounds , but neither Lorimar film defeat Dragonslayer in the summer fan- tasy sweepstakes. Radio is certainly far cashed in on the tattle, and the company estate projects, or more efficient than television, though soon withdrew from feature-film pro- studies indicate its effectiveness is low. Trailers are also important, since they duction. sell to people whose moviegoing atten- dance has been established. Even so, The 1981 track records of the surviv- any other too much television advertising plays ing studios demand lengthier appraisal: worthwhile profit- like a condensed trailer, rather than cre- ating a message that will effectively • reach television viewers. Says Edward Kalish, marketing man at MGM-UA: Columbia. Columbia boasted a \"The industry has a long way to go in learning not simply to make television smaller market share than other majors. making venture in spots but to create commercials, de- Yet with a significantly lower aggregate signed to sell a product.\" negative cost, it was the most profitable North America. We The right kind of commercial can still of the majors in terms of domestic theat- sell a certain kind of picture. The sur- prise Christmas hit Taps was released rical revenues. (Except for Annie, the will send you this with almost no advance publicity; but $40-million musical to be released in the trailer was strong, and the TV spots were sensational: they got the public- May, Columbia has avoided big-budget very select list for especially the teen audience looking for pictures since 1977's Close Encounters of something to see this \"adult\" season- the Third Kind-the studio's most ex- pensive picture and its biggest hit. 1941 $190. was a co-production with Universal.) Columbia's four leaders in 1981 were all comedies: from last Christmas, Stir Crazy ($58.4 million) and Seems Like IAAIC Old TImes ($22 million); and from the summer, Stripes ($39.5 million) and Nice 8306 Wilshire Dreams ($17 million). The ads for all four pictures stressed silliness, and for Blvd. Suite 198 once truth in advertising worked. With the exception of Seems Like Old TImes , -Beverly Hills, all the films found their audiences quickly, which paid Columbia extra div- CA 90211 idends; a distributor stands to make more in film rental from money earned Satisfaction guaranteed earlier in the run (see Lee Beaupre's chart, p . 66) . Nice Dreams garnered al- or money refunded 61
Distributors' Derby: Hare Beats Tortoise most all of its business in the first two weeks, demonstrating that Cheech & With most films now opening simul- Arthur typifies the word-of-mouth Chong have a large and loyal following taneously in 500-1,500 theaters across success. Its opening-week gross of -they're the Abbott and Costello of the the country, their commercial fates are $4,700,000 in 701 theaters was well Head Set. generally determined in one week. below the $6,850,000 grossed by End- This chart lists 1981 releases in the less Love at581 houses during the same Absence ofMalice , which should hit at order of their eventual U.S.-Canadian July 17-23 period, and rentals of only least $20 million in domestic rentals, rentals, which are then compared with $10-15 million for the Dudley Moore represented a signal success for Colum- the same pictures' opening-week busi- vehicle could have been realistically bia's marketing division. Test reactions ness at the box office. Because films projected from its first week's returns. and a big-city opening had proved favor- typically command their best terms in But whereas business on Endless Love able, so Columbia opened the film in the first few weeks of release (some- many markets a week earlier than the times a guaranteed rental of seventy Warner-Orion's Arrhur. rescheduled broad release date. The percent of the box office gross for the declined in the ensuing weeks due to print ads emphasized two important first two or three weeks before drop- tepid public reaction, the grosses for pitches: the \"getting even with the sys- ping to sixty, fifty, and lower), word-of- Arthur reversed normal expectations tem\" theme, and the relationship be- mouth on less heralded pictures may by remaining exceptionally steady for tween Paul Newman and Sally Field. It not circulate fast enough for them to the next five months. By the end of was the first picture in ages that had earn the highest income for their dis~ their first month's playoff, the Brooke Newman playing opposite a litrong fe- tributors. As can be seen below, fully Shields soaper had grossed male co-star in a romantic vein, and Co- twenty of last year's top twenty-five $19,500,000, while Arthur was already lumbia astutely capitalized on public rental earners also placed among the up to $21,700,000 and would continue desire to see Newman in such a role top twenty-five first-week box office to gross a remarkable $4 million or bet- agaIn. grossers. ter for each of many weeks to come. By now it has passed $80 million at the box Neighbors, which had been widely ex- The evident importance of gaining office, or $37 million of film rentals. pected to lead the pack at Christmas, immediate public acceptance of a new did snag more business during the peak release has given today's marketing -LEE BEAUPRE weeks than any other release, abetted teams considerable power. Some in- by an excellent trailer and a massive re- dustry observers have bemoaned the lease of about 1,500 prints. It won't be do-or-die nature of most contemporary the largest grosser, ultimately, but with a movie launchings, and the resultant projected earning of $15 million, disas- production emphasis on sequels or re- ter was averted. The Columbia strategy makes of previously popular films. was to saturate the market when the kids Nevertheless, an occasional picture were off from school and then to capture defies current rules of thumb, opening the adults in January. The first half of slowly only to build through favorable the plan worked, even though, as antici- audience reaction or collapsing quickly pated, the kids were not fond of the after a big opening because of bad film. word-of-mouth. Neil Simon's Only When I Laugh van- Ranking Domestic First-Week No. of Ranking by quished the competing women's pic- Rentals* Theaters First Week tures in September, but was weakened by Rentals Film (Distributor) B.a. G r o s s * nevertheless by the competition and a I. Raiders ofthe Lost Ark (Paramount) $90.4 1,078 B.a. Gross campaign that sent out conflicting sig- 2. Supemuln /I (Wamer Bros.) 64.0 $14.1 1,395 nals. Was it comedy or drama? Cute or 3. Stir Crazy (Columbia) 58.4 3 harrowing? Kristy McNichol's picture or 4. 9t05 (20th Century-Fox) 57.8 24.0 813 I Marsha Mason's? $12-million worth of 5. Stripes (Columbia) 39.5 13.1 · 912 4 moviegoers were interested enough to 6. Any Which Way You Can (Warner Bros.) 39.5 6.9 1,077 22 find out. 37.0 10.9 1,540 9 7. Anhur (OrionlWarner Bros.) 35.4 11.8 6 The pickup of Tess was generally ac- 8. The Cannonball Run (20th Century-Fox) 26.8 4.7 701 corded high marks by rival company ex- 9. The Four Seasons (Universal) 25.4 18.9 1,680 2 ecutives, and Columbia did a mostly 10. For Your Eyes Only (United Artists) 24.6 7.0 21 superb job with it. But the final rental II. Popeye (paramount) 22.1 11.8 599 figure of $9.8 million does not represent 12. Seems like Old Times (Columbia) 18.0 9.4 1.086 7 a substantial profit for the company on 17.6 4.5 14 theatrical release. If any mistake was 13. The Fox and the Hound (Buena Vista) 17 .0 7.6 901 .made, it may have been that the film 14. Cheech & Chong'sNice Dreams (Univ.) 16.1 12.2 942 18 was brought along too slowly. 15. Excalibur (OrionlWarner Bros.) 16.0 6.8 1,030 5 16. Flash Gordon (Universal) 16.0 5.0 1,390 24 The company also had two animated 17. Time Bandits (Embassy) 15.6 7.6 features: a success with Heavy Metal 18. The Great Muppet Caper (AFD/Univ.) 15.6 5.6 692 17 ($9.3 million) and a failure with Ameri- 19. Tarzan. the Ape Man (MGM/UA) 15 .3 10.2 825 can Pop ($3 million). Magazine and 20. Clash ofthe Titans (MGM/UA) 15. 1 9.6 821 19 soundtrack tie-ins were an integral part 21. Bustin' Loose (Universal) 14.2 8.2 680 12 of the former's success, while the latter 22. Endless Love (Universal) 13.8 6.8 930 16 was hobbled by its period orientation. In 23. The Empire Strikes Back, Reissue (Fox) 13 .6 11.2 1,126 23 24. History of the World-Pan I (Fox) 7.4 726 8 25. Fon Apache. the Bronx (Time-Life/Fox) 6.2 581 19 1.364 484 13 795 15 II 31. Halloween /I (Universal) 10.5 9.6 1,2 17 25 10.0 8.2 \\,350 20 33. Friday the 13th Pan 2 (Paramount) 9.4 9.7 1,566 9.0 6.7 38. Star Wars , Reissue (20th Century-Fox) 7.1 930 8.7 41. Mommie Dearest (paramount) 563 44. First Famil~ (Warner Bros.) ·Figures in millions of dollars. •• Did not place among the rop twenty-five. 62
other returns, Columbia yielded $7.3 (Despite his strenuous attempts to way Reds was going to come near re- million from The Competition; Happy prove otherwise, Reynolds' b.o. bang couping without a long playoff period. Birthday to Me scared up $5 million; and comes solely from the good-ole-boy car But Paramount opted to slam it into Modern Romance barely registered with chases; in anything else, he's Elliott 389 theaters, widening to 665 two only $1.3 million. Gould.) Moreover, the Paternity ad was weeks later-a take-the-money-and- too close to the ad for Stripes, which had run strategy that suggested little confi- • preceded it by three months. Para- dence in the film's long-range appeal. mount's senior v.P. for marketing,_Gor- With some help from the Academy Paramount,which had won top mar- don Weaver, admits that this was one Awards, Reds will probably end up col- keting honors hands down in 1980, instance where \"we fell in love with our lecting between $25 and $30 million- ,slipped significantly last year. Even so, own campaign.\" no disaster but certainly a commercial the studio confronted most of the excit- failure. Four films-including the Par- ing marketing problems, succeeding in amount-distributed Postman and S.o .B. The Reds ad campaign was lousy. some instances and stumbling in others. -floundered in the $6-million range. The Washington Post aptly described Dragonslayer, an $18-million co-produc- the campaign's central image-a di- Paramount had the number one hit of tion with Disney, was the only film of its sheveled Beatty embracing an ex- '81 , Raiders of the Lost Ark ($90.5 mil- type to bomb in the June rush of fantasy lion and rising). If it's true, as Gabe adventure pix, including Superman II, ~~ Sumner insists, that \"Successful films For Your Eyes Only, and, most pointedly, prove that a campaign was a success, and Clash of the Titans . Perhaps Dra- I!IIIIII...... FREE Catalog if a film is a failure, the campaign gonslayer was perceived as more of a Illustrated. The Greatest failed,\" then Raiders was a successful monster movie than a fantasy; and per- Selection of Things to Show on campaign. Yet the ball nearly dropped haps it was to counteract this misconcep- super 8, 16mm, slides, on it: a month before the movie opened tion that Paramount devised an elitist videocassette and VideoDisc. almost no one had heard about it. Para- campaign that didn't promise the fun of Movies from Laurel & Hardy mount set out to remedy the situation Chaplin to Goldie Hawn and with a national sneak preview the week Clash. Derek. All guaranteed to be before release. Though Paramount does Atlantic City ($3 million, but with satisfactory. Our 54th year of not ordinarily buy network time, it did providing great movies to own. spring for spots in prime time the night renewed life ahead after all the awards) SEND FREE CATALOG TO: before the sneak. With strong critical and Gallipoli ($2.4 million) reflect Par- boosts and the magazine covers (which amount's penchant for pickups during Name ______________________ everyone concedes are as manna), the 1981, and both were nursed carefully. Address _____________________ picture took off-no thanks to an am- But neither caught fire. On Gallipoli, City _________ State _ Zip _ _ biguous print ad, which forefronted the Paramount apparently lavished sub- face of Harrison Ford as if he were this stantial print-ad spending in an effort Blackhawk Films. Inc. generation's Bogie, and gave no tangible to create a broad market for a special- Dept. 606 indication of the film's tenor or appeal. ized film that faltered beyond first-run (Paramount tried the national-sneak -as did virtually every other 1981 film 1235 W. 5th St.• Davenport. IA 52808 gambit again a month later with Victory, on which this strategy was used. and theaters were filled with Pelt fans- COLLECTOR'S CATALOG the very audience the picture could have Paramount benefited in 1981 from NO.2 NOW AVAILABLE used its opening weekend. Victory spillover of two 1980 releases: Popeye, failed, with only $4.2 million in rentals.) which ended up with $24.6 million, ONLY $3.00 and Ordinary People, which picked up And Paramount's next highest earner $5 million of its $23 . 1 million after win- Original behind Raiders? It's a shocker-Friday ning its Oscar for Best Picture. The Posters the 13th, Part II, with $10 million company can only hope for such fallout (though Reds has since exceeded that from its two Christmas 1981 releases, rare figure). Mommie Dearest caused a stir Reds and Ragtime. lobby cards with its post-release shift to a rau- cously campy hanger ad, prompting a Rumor had it that Paramount execu- @ lawsuit from the producer over consulta- tives had to set the distribution on Reds tion rights. Because of the derisive without seeing the film. Gordon CI~~M@~()~ laughter, or perhaps in spite of it, the Weaver contradicts this, stating that film scratched its way to $9 million. the film was viewed in form sufficient CoUections Bought, Sold. Traded to realize what they had early last sum- 12 - 6 p.m. Tuesdays - Saturdays A major disappointment was Pater- mer. Well, somebody blew it. A rival nity, the Burt Reynolds comedy which marketing executive argued that (415) 176-9988 only gleaned $8.2 million, less than \"They should have released it like Burt's previous Paramount loser, Rough Apocalypse Now\" -a big publicity 1488 VaUejo St.. San Francisco. CA..94109 Cut. The ad-showing Burt pointing his buildup followed by an opening in se- finger, Uncle Sam-style, with the line lect theaters, broadening as demand \"He wants you to have his baby\"-was grew, Given the film's nearly four catchy, and seemed to stir up interest. hours' running time and its M2-million The problem was that the ad was di- negative cost (some of which Para- rected at a female audience, which has mount is obliged to cover, despite re- never flocked to Reynolds' movies and ports to the contrary), there was no certainly not to this misogynist comedy. 63
hausted Diane Keaton-as looking their own campaigns, using only spending, Arthur might have sunk. But \"like a travel poster for Albania.\" Fur- Warners' distribution apparatus. they didn't, and everything came out ther, the design of the quote ads that swell. followed the opening was oppressively Superman II mayor may not be prof- unreadable-vast amounts of type itable-one source put combined cost Orion's earlier success, ExcaLibur, ul- splayed about the ad space. No doubt of the two Superman films at $108 mil- timately disappointed with only $17 the ad photo was meant to convey and lion-but a $64-million take for the million when, based on first-run ex- evoke strong emotion, and the copy U.S. and Canada is substantial by any trapolations, it looked to exceed $30 intended to provide critical benedic- reckoning. Warners smartly delayed million. What happened? The film the film's release from Christmas 1980 simply hit the wall as it ran into wide tion. But nothing about it worked. to June '81, figuring on a summer rush. release. Meanwhile, Prince of the City Weaver indicated that there had not failed to capture more than $4.5 mil- been enough time to test the ads-but (Columbia has done the same with An- with the film in production since 1979, nie this year.) The delay paid offsplen- lion. Rollover is an outright failure at time should have been made. didly, with the biggest opening week about $6 million. And Sharky's Ma- in the history of the business. Spurred chine will be only marginally profitable Finally, the publicity blackout- by a terrific trailer and TV spots, the -perhaps $15 million for Burt partially mandated by the last-minute film probably earned about as much as production demands on Beatty, but it could-and that's the job of the mar- aReynolds' hommage Clint Eastwood. partially a matter of strategy-was ill- keting division. The same can justly advised. Instead of building up antici- be said for Clint Eastwood's Any Which Ladd has not performed auspi- pation, the film opened with relatively Way You Can, which netted $39.5 mil- ciously so far. Both Body Heat ($10 mil- little advance word. It should have lion, beginning in Christmas 1980. lion) and OutLand ($9.5 million) been a bold event, but excitement was disappointed at the box office, and mild. Reds cried out for creative or- Final figures for other Warners films Looker ($2 million) fizzled. Chariots of chestration; instead, it lumbered into from Christmas past: ALtered States at Fire, with $2 million ~o far in limited the marketplace. $12.4 million, and First FamiLy at a release, may turn into the biggest pic- somewhat surprising $8.7 million. For ture yet for the fledgling company, al- Ragtime seemed a more decisive fail- that matter, Warners' release of the though Ladd may be handling it too ure. The initial ad logo looked like a CBS Films Back Roads did pull in $6.3 slowly. As I write, four months after patriotic paint-dripping that was hard million-suggesting Sally Field's Chariots' New York opening, the film to discern in the paper. Paramount drawing power even in a sorry vehicle is just beginning its wide release. The sought to entice an upscale audience at and especially in rural areas. Of other early numbers are so strong and consis- first and anticipated the shuffling of Warners product, So Fine earned only tent that Ladd almost certainly has a ads that followed; Weaver contends $4.5 million, and This Is ELvis a paltry winner here. that the company stuck to its plan de- $1.3 million. spite the disappointing initial results. • Once again (fourth picture in a row), no Warners handled eight films with one saw fit to highlight Mary Steen- Orion (some of which were co-produc- Metro-Goldwyn -Mayer/United burgen's presence in the film. Even tions). The beacon through it all was Artists. A special citation is due to Pat O'Brien got his picture in one lay- Arthur, which sported the most amaz- UA, the most improved marketing op- out, but not poor Mary. ing legs of the year. Asked about the eration in 1981. You used to be able to Arthur campaign, a rival executive identify a UA ad by its mediocrity and There were ways to sell Ragtime: as a sniffed, \"Arthur never had any cam- out-of-touch approach. No more. UA theatrical film epic parallel to Roots, or paign.\" Instead, it was that latter-day is back in the game. If its lead per- as a spectacle, or with Dino de Lauren- rarity, a film the public embraced. former, For Your Eyes OnLy, was low for tiis recycling his lurid (and effective) Still, it might never have happened. In a Bond ($25.5 million), it harkened campaign for Mandingo. But, like the the third week of its release, when the back to the earlier Bond style and may film itself, the Ragtime campaign con- film stood to lose one-tenth of its the- have lured back some older patrons to fused the issue by trying to tackle the aters, Orion opted to increase its ad theaters. Two campaigns showed myriad elements of the story all at expenditure and buy network televi- savvy: Tarzan, the Ape Man boasted once. The impression was that the film sion time. Result: By mid-August, in strong publicity and an ad with a touch was about an olden time with olden 100 fewer theaters, the film was out- of originality; CLash of the Titans art- actors. Paramount handled James Cag- grossing the first week by ten percent. fully combined two different ads-one ney well, and there was strong advance Former Orion marketing chief Sumner by graphic artist Hildebrandt and an- publicity laying down a base for selling insists that, based on midweek grosses other more traditional \"Sinbad\" style the film on release. The weakness and intelligence on audience reaction ad-to sell the film to a broad audience came in the follow-through. obtained in the field by Warners, the without the pretense of DragonsLayer. decision was anything but courageous. • Perhaps, but Orion had already seen In other action, Raging BuLL kayoed Sphinx ($1 million), The Hand ($1.1 at $10 million, while The French Lieu- Warner Bros.lOrion/Ladd. million), and Wolfen ($4.5 million) bite tenant's Woman has passed $8 million Warners has been the most consist- the dust, with imminent prospect of and has some life remaining. The lat- ently well-run film company over the Under the Rainbow doing likewise ter once again indicates that expensive past decade, in a business where too ($8.3 million)-and both Wolfen and platforming doesn't necessarily lead to many people are looking for a big score Under the Rainbow were expensive pic- better business when the picture fi- to bailout their mistakes. Warners' tures, in the $15- to 20-million range. nally broadens. Eye of the NeedLe deals with Ladd and Orion gave it Had Orion conventionally cut its ad earned $6.7 million; the miscalcula- plenty of product in 1981, although the tions of that release have already been smaller companies ostensibly control well-analyzed by Stuart Byron in The Village Voice. Rich and Famous and 64
True Confessions tapped only $4.4 mil- opted instead for a quick Christmas around $17 million, possibly higher, lion, although the latter is still in re- tapping a youth audience and active lease. Thief couldn't steal more than saturation hoping to lure Steve Martin word-of-mouth support. MeL Brooks' $4.3 million, and The FormuLa, DeadLy History of the WorLd-Part I earned Blessing, La Cage aux FoLIes II, and The fans. They never came, perhaps due to $13.9 million, which probably didn't Dogs ofWar did even less. Perhaps the show much profit for Fox; Brooks re- greatest miscalculation in terms of what Lee Beaupre calls \"the Parnell tained the foreign rights in return for a marketing dollars spent was .. .ALI the smaller salary and provision of a com- MarbLes, which popped for expensive effect,\" after the 1937 Clark Gable pletion bond, and they are turning out World Series spots, figuring that that to be far more lucrative. Time-Life audience would be the target market. flop : a star is cast in a role the audience Films' Fort Apache, the Bronx ended The film grossed only $1.5 million. up a surprise performer at $13 .7 mil- doesn't want to see him in . Michael lion, considering that it earned almost A word is due to the VA Classics all its bucks in urban situations. Mod- division, a pinchpenny operation that Kaplan of Northstar Productions con- ern ProbLems surmounted no publicity compensates with originality. Though to earn about $11 million. Why did Cutter's Way has not as yet surpassed tends convincingly that the film could Under the Rainbow, also with Chevy the million-dollar rental mark, the ads Chase, do less? It could be the time of consistently took fresh tacks, giving have rebounded after the disappoint- year involved (August vs. Christmas), the print reader something new to but compare the ads: Fox emphasized catch the eye. The Last Metro rode to ing Christmas run and been trans- the dumb comedy with Chase clearly $1.5 million, a respectable return on featured; Orion illustrated the premise investment. The proof is that VA Clas- formed into an event. It didn ' t rather than the draw. The last install- sics topper Nathaniel Kwit was tapped ment of the Omen series, The FinaL to run the whole marketing show after happen. Pennies' trailer and TV spots Conflict, grossed the least, $9.1 mil- MGM bought VA. lion. were, however, marvelous. The same This Christmas was inauspicious for One of Fox's most impressive coups the company. Buddy Buddy won't ex- can't be said for the desperate cam- was the marketing on HardLy Working, ceed $3 million, nor Pennies from which copped nearly $8.9 million, Heaven $5 million. Though Pennies paign for Whose Life Is It Anyway? The which any reasonable mind might have still seems a daft production choice, suspected impossible for a Jerry Lewis the rave reviews could have been used marketing men have done cartwheels film . The campai played its cards to build an audience; but the co to keep the audience from figuring out that the film is a black comedy about the right to die. By now, Whose Life may have earned that right. • Twentieth Century-Fox. Fox proved a capable distributor of rela- tively mediocre commercial product, though it has been deficient in the pro- motion and publicity areas. Nine to Five was the top earner, surging forth in January to garner nearly $58 million. The Cannonball Run scored quickly with the summer audience, boosting $35.4 million. looks to come in Last Chants For ASlow Dance (Dead End) A film ~f extraordinary restraint and elegance. LAST CHANTS is remarkable enough in its own terms but, remarkable though it certainly is, that would seriously Alan Sutherland, SIGHT &SOUND underestimate the film's importance. For LAST CHANTS does what virtually no other film made in the USA in the The ~asiest and most disturbing of Jost's features, and seventies does - it exemplifies the possibility of a to my mind the best, LAST CHANTS conceivably gets closer radical altern ative cinema, in econom i c, aesthetic and to the mentality of the alienated and seemingly motive- politicdl terms - which does not inevitably condemn it- less killer than either Mailer or Capote . self in advance to an avan t -garde, elitist or otherwise narrow and sectari an audience . Jonathan Rosenbaum, FIll·' C01414ENT In its reconciliation of sophisticated filmic self- Jim Hillier, MOVIE consciousness with clear moral/political didactic intent, LAST CHANTS is as close as we have come to a Brechtian Beautifully filmed and edited, LAST CHANTS has the impact Cinema, a cinema for learning. of a powerful short story. Truly remarkable. David James, S. CALIF. ART JOURNAL Vic Skolnick, CINEMA FILM FOLIO For' bookings and information telephone (201) 891 8240 or write: (OOi i<o f:::·.:::: r. o {........} .~:: ..~ l:.:; : •• • ••••• : : 0•••••••••: • ! .: °0 : ....•.... ...... : ...... \\~ 65
perfectly, aiming for and getting the is well on its way to approaching major no longer with us. Lew Grade, last of three weeks' worth of business in the status. Time Bandits showed not only the red-hot losers, put his AFD to picture and pitching it as \"The Origi- prescience on the part of Embassy in sleep, after having stretched The Jazz nal Jerk,\" with clever art. But not even picking it up, but also tactical acumen Singer to a surprising $13 million but the publicity smarts of George Hamil- in releasing it in a late fall marketplace getting only $5.5 million for the Agatha ton could rescue Zorro , the Gay Blade starved for a fantasy film; rentals have Christie The Mirror Crack'd. Filmways ($4.5 million). Other results: A Change already passed $16 million. Embassy spent $8 million to ballyhoo Blow Out; of Seasons ($7 .3 million, despite the continued to parlay low-budget fea- since that's just what the film earned in misleading shots of Bo in the hot tub), tures into middle-earning successes, domestic rentals, its $18-million nega- On the Right Track ($5.5 million), Trib- from Escape from New York (an imagi- tive cost remains completely unre- ute ($4 million), Death Hunt ($3.5 mil- native campaign that garnered $11.6 couped domestically. American lion), Eyewitness ($2 million), and million) and The Howling ($8.2 million) Cinema Releasing filed for bank- Southern Comfort ($1.8 million). to Take This Job and Shove It ($7.2 mil- ruptcy. Many sub-distributors closed lion), The Night the Lights Went Out in their doors. Producers were also af- • Georgia and Scanners (both $6 mil- flicted : Time-Life got out of the busi- lion), An Eyefor an Eye ($5.8 million), ness, while Melvin Simon remained Universal. Universal won the Me- and Fear No Evil ($3 million). dormant, hoping to resurrect 1982 in morial Day weekend with The Four partnership with Alan Landsburg Pro- Seasons ($26.8 million) and Bustin' Buena Vista (Disney) bit the dust ductions and Reeves Communica- Loose ($15.3 million, riding Richard with its live-action features, but its ani- tions. Pryor's phenomenal popularity-he mated The Fox and the Hound pulled in may be the most reliable drawing star a surprising $18 million and will cer- Even as American Zoetrope perches in the business after Cheech & tainly turn a profit on its initial release, on the edge of survival, it could lay Chong). But 1981 was not a banner while the reissues of The Aristocats and claim to the marketing phenomenon of year. Flash Gordon managed to tot up Cinderella were most impressive. A the year. Taking a relatively minor si- $16 million, but Melvin and Howard market remains for animation, prop- couldn't break $2 million even with erly approached and exploited. (BV lent film epic and transforming it into a: two major Oscars. Universal picked up figures are aided by a reputation for the product of defunct AFD, netting effective collections on a par with Uni- spectacular event, filling cavernous au- $16 million for The Great Muppet Caper versal. ) ditoriums with the lure of a live orches- (less than half the earnings of the first tra, the reissue of Napoleon generated movie) and $6.9 million for The Legend New World Pictures didn't have a an amazing $2.5 million in rentals- ofthe Lone Ranger. bad year, paced by The Private Eyes at and Universal has yet to put it into $5 million and Breaker Morant, the co- road-show release with recorded With Polygram product, Universal venture with Quartet Films, at $2 mil- soundtrack. Let no one doubt that the scored $15.1 million for Endless Love lion. (The Variety charts inadvertently crucial factor in all that success was and $11.6 million for An American list New World releases not at the pure marketing inspiration, drawing Werewolf in London, the latter with a rental figure received by the distribu- from the shrewdest of the new and the campaign that never found its identity, tor but in terms of the theatrical gross wisest of the old. As a filmgoer, I might always pitching the intended market taken in by the exhibitor; between .resent the hoopla; but as a lover of a just off center. The Incredible Shrinking forty and fifty percent of the Variety good sell, I can only bow in admiration. Woman stretched to $9.5 million, while figures wouid be accurate.) New It displayed guts and imagination in a Nighthawks and Ghost Story will fall World's exploitation product did not dull marketing year. just short of $9 million-the latter fare well this year, partly because, with something of a surprise presence on all the other independents, it was • the holiday charts, the former a prime forced out of summer playing time by example of the decline of genre films the major studio hits. The great problems facing the mar- in the marketplace. Continental Divide keting of films resist simple nostrums, drew only $6.2 million. Funhouse Kill and Kill Again was the biggest though each studio has its own article exploitation hit, amassing $7 million in offaith: MGM-UA with its specialized scared up $3.8 million. Many Univer- rentals. But the marketing sleeper of TV spots; Paramount with its use of sal releases didn't come near the $1 the year was assuredly Jensen-Farley's regional ad agencies to satisfy demand million mark. Private Lessons. I remember discus- on the spot; Columbia with its weekly sing the ads the week they appeared in studies measuring audience awareness The jury is still out on On Golden Los Angeles, and no one felt they did a of all films in or approaching the mar- Pond: it's a hit, but the degree remains coherent job of selling the picture. We ketplace. As Gabe Sumner puts it, to be determined. The film scored were all wrong: the film has earned \"Whether it's based on research or just such an unexpected publicity boost $5.7 million to date and is far from the seat of your pants, marketing ai- from the Fonda-Hepburn-Fonda par- played out. Windwalker posted an im- ways comes down to gut instinct.\" The lay that it could have profitably opened pressive $6.5 million. Among the art- future of movies has always rested on with the pattern that Reds adopted. It's house product, Return ofthe Secaucus 7 connecting the films with the audience a shame that Universal couldn't guess and Moscow Does Not Believe In Tears -and that critical task, for all its mys- what an audience picture it really had . both broke the million-dollar mark, tery and crassness, remains the support and I Sent a Letter to My Love and From system that keeps the creative process • Mao to Mozart at least came close to functioning. The trends may not be that. encouraging, but there's a saving grace Independents. Once again, Avco based on past experience: Whenever Embassy (now Embassy) led the pack, Many independent companies are you spot a trend, it's probably already amassing an astounding five-percent past. ,~~ market share, more than half that of MGM-UA, meaning that the company 66
NEW RELEASES FROM NEW YORKER FILMS ''HILARIOUS AND ROMANTIC.!~ -Carlos (Iarens, Soho News ~~I~IJ) A film by fernando Tlueba A New Yorker films Release 'c· 1981 CALL OR WRITE FOR OUR 1982 SPECIAL ATTRACTIONS CATALOGUE. ~tt!ftnetl 16 West 61st Street, New York, NY 10023 (212) 247-6110
All America's in 'Love' by Mitch Tuchman many video projects, viewers become different periods, I would do more of participants entrained on a course of ac- one thing and less ofanother. The paint- \"I'm the love expert apparently, and celerated self-awareness. The idea for ing was something that I did a lot of. And I'm totally dismayed,\" Wendy Clarke this particular project stems from I did a lot of off-off-Broadway stage de- complained one January morning as we Clarke's own somewhat anguished , pri- signing for La Mama and Showcase were concluding our series of long- vately recorded confessions of love and Theater. That was when I was in my distance telephone interviews. \"I've loneliness. It was there that she discov- middle twenties; I'm getting into my been inundated with calls from all over ered the medium is the metier. -M.T. late thirties now. the world: from Australia, from Mon- WENDY CLARKE: I was raised to be treal. \" Book publishers, magazine edi- What happened was that I had been tors, radio and television journalists- Wendy Clarke . working odd jobs and taking classes, and even the National Star-are all eager for an artist by both of my parents, and the I decided that what I needed to do was a word from Clarke on love. \"I don't school that I went to when I was little go back to school, because I wasn't want to be put in that position, because I was very involved with art being an im- really clear about what I was doing, and I don't like experts.\" portant part of life. It's something that thought a little bit of structure at that I've always lived with. I love to draw, point would be helpful. I went to Sarah Eschewing experts, for five years and I draw a lot. I was sent to dancing Lawrence, where they had an adult edu- Clarke has been recording people's feel- school, and I love to dance. I went to cation program-I was in my latish ings about love in three-minute, video- acting school, and I love to do that. At twenties - and I took a course taped bursts she calls simply the Love using journals as a resource, using your Tapes . \"Sometimes I say to them, 'I'm daily life, using your environment as the not interested in what you think about it source, as the content for your work. orwhat you've been told by your parents Once I saw that it was okay to be doing or the church. I want you to talk about that-which was sort of what I was do- how you experience it.' I make that as ing anyhow but wasn' t feeling okay clear as I can.\" The resulting tapes she about-it just made a huge difference shows in great batches in museums, in for me. prisons, in office building lobbies-and then invites viewers to make love tapes Do you continue with any of these pur- of their own. suits-painting, acting, cklncing-in your current work? On Valentine's morning, PBS nation- wide showed a selection of Clarke's Yes, definitely. Let's say, my work has \"gems. \" Throughout the remainder of two different veins as I see it: work that the day, viewers were welcomed into comes out of the journal, like the Lpve their local stations to record love tapes. Tapes, and the other work, which is a These were added to the 900 Clarke more play/movement kind of work. herself had already recorded and made available for future exhibition as the What is being generated along that Love Tapes burgeon. second line? Given the subject of the Love Tapes- The last one I did along those lines I that's love, not sex-and a press corps at once overimaginative and underin- did in Seattle for a festival. The piece formed, it is little wonder that Clarke, had three big metal pendulums with the daughter of filmmaker Shirley cameras at the ends of them. The peo- Clarke, finds herself an unwilling sensa- ple who came to it could come up and tion. \"They are asking me about what swing the pendulums. In back of the people say; content is what they are in- pendulums, there was a tower, a terested in. \" wooden totem that had three people holding each other up, one on top of But there is more to the Love Tapes another, and they were cut out of the than love. There is tape: there is art and screen. What you would do is place your there is technology in the service of body in front of the camera to make it Clarke's humanistic approach to the me- look like you were one of those three dium , which she calls \"interactive people, and because the pendulums video.\" In the Love Tapes , as in all her were moving, you had to find the move- ment that would have your image fit into the cutout on the screen. To me that's like a dance piece that is performed by 68
Three Stories of Love though, he disappeared from is the other person and where my life and I never saw him 1end and where the other per- amount you ever get as an again. About six months later, son begins. It just becomes one. And 1 think it's great and Darlene, actress adult can ever make up for he called me and told me that it's terrible and it's hard, but 1 he'd gotten married. I said, wouldn't want to not have it. They say that people can't that. You just always need \"Well, if you're married what the hell are you calling me Rachael, 4 years old live without love. But I've more. You can never get for?\" And he said they were I love my stuffed animals, getting a divorce. And he was lived without it all my life. I enough. I've always been sui- . .. God that went fast. Wow. and well I sort of love my friend and stuff. Maybe 1 never had it as a child, or as a cidal, too. I think it runs in our Christine, artist cou Id maybe Iove myseIf or maybe I could love my life. Or grownup. And my parents al- family, because my brother al- I have to preface this by say- I could do lots of things in my ing that these statements are life like play, and play with ways threatened to send me to ready killed himself and I not universal. I can't say that friends, and make new this is the way love is because friends, and as I grow up I can the orphans' home, and when blame it on his upbringing. this is the way that I feel love do things. is; it's not necessarily this way you have a threat like that He never felt loved either. for anyone else. I'm vety lonely for people. hanging over your head, you An exampIe 0 f the type 0 f There is just me and my I think that love is very mother, you know. Well I can neve r feel loved or man that I get involved with, close to hate. The line is very have sisters and they're right fine. I always hate the one I now in another room with my wanted. I was simply an ob- well, he still owes me three love. I love myself a lot and I mother and I'm doing a Love think I'm very beautiful, but I Tape by myself. But, I don't ject to be bossed around and hundred dollars, and when he also hate myself a lot. And know what to say else .... those two feelings are what yelled at. Then when I grew was out of work I supported rule my life. Those are what I 1 love the nature. And I re- am obsessed with. They color ally enjoy nature and love. I up, I was attracted to the type him. I paid his rent, made his everything else. I think that love the plants and trees and being in love with another animals. And I love the ocean of man that was cold and indif- car payments, paid his bar person for me means wanting and beach. I love to find to be that person. I become rocks. And I love to do lots of ferent to me. I recently found bills-and then I asked him to consumed with love and I things in life. Well it'.s hard to want to become that other say. from reading a psychology teach me how to drive and he person. I want to lose myself in that other person. And it Well, there is something book that women are attracted said, \"You're too old to learn to gets all jumbled up. I can't more that I forgot. I love my- figure out who is me and who self and I do. And I sometimes to the type of men that their drive.\" So I took private 1es- am very lonely. mothers are, and with me it sons and I did learn to drive was really true. I even accused and I passed my driving test my mother of withholding af- with flying colors. Mainly to fection from me, and she said show him, I guess. that it was because her dog Finally a wonderful thing died. She'd shown love and happened, though. I finally affection to her dog, and it met someone who was affec- died. So she thought that tionate to me. He was an ac- maybe ifshe'd shown us affec- tor. I remember he came up tion we'd die too. Which I behind me and kissed me on thought was a pretty stupid ra- my neck. And that may not tionale for withholding love mean much to the average and affection from your chil- person, but it meant every- dren. But withhold them, she thing to me, I still think about did. When you have a lack of it. Two weeks after telling me love in your childhood, no that I was his girlfriend, the audience that comes to it-and you they draw. The drawings are really I was into keeping journals and into us- don't have to be a dancer to do it. funny. The line quality on them is ex- ing myself as the resource. traordinary, because of the loss of con- Does all your work at this time involve trol. In this video world, it's very easy to Was your intention to make a work of video? get left and right reversed and up and video an out of it from the beginning, or down reversed; to try to function in that was it something more private? It all involves video, and it all involves space is amazing. I have people hang audiences doing it. them up on the walls, and they're won- It was meant to be totally private- derful to look at, and, again, you don't though, because you're recor-ding it, you But is doesn't involve a final record, have to be an artist to do it. know that at any point if you want to you does it? can share it. One of my rules is that I can This, infact, gets at thefeedbackpoten- show it if I feel like it. It's like a sketch- It doesn't have to, no. Like this piece, tial of video, doesn't it? book in that sense. It's a way of working Totem, was live; there was no tape at all. Well , there's the kind of feedback things out. It's the really creative part in You don't always generate a video tape . where you point the camera into the that you don't have a direct goal, a prod- monitor, and you get those patterns. I uct that you're looking for; you can just I'm not interested in that. Even in the don't care about that. Then there's an- let what happens happen. Love Tapes, that was a kind of sideline, other kind of feedback where you see because for me the part that's the most yourself, and it gives you feedback • interesting is the process. I mean, I see about yourself. That's what I'm inter- How extensive is the journal? myself as a process artist, putting a struc- ested in. It can add a lot of information I haven't done it in quite a while. The ture there for people to work within, and that can be very useful and can speed up last time I did the journal was about two that \"working within\" is the piece. It self-awareness. Psychologically, it's an months ago, when I was trying to work excites me to get people who don't real- enormous help. You're able to see your- out with my man friend some problems ize they can be wonderfully creative and self as other people see you. It's some- that we were having; we were trying to have them be wonderfully creative. thing that human beings otherwise use the video to help in terms of our That's what I mean by \"interactive would never have a chance to do. I love working certain issues out. video.\" It takes the relationship of the that, and I try to use that in my work. In the beginning, from '72 through person and the video and, combining '78, it was really extensive, like almost them, makes something happen that When you began your video journal, every day. I would also find myself using never happened before. had you done other video work, or was it mostly when I was unhappy; or when I that the first thing you sat down to do with was living alone I would use it more than There's another one that I really love, that Portapak? if I was living with other people, be- which is a self-portrait piece, where peo- cause then you have other people to talk pie draw their own portraits by looking That was the first thing. At that point to. I used it as a way of talking with at their images on a monitor. They see their profiles on one monitor, and they see the paper on another monitor, and 69
myself. another kind of feeling. I spend a lot of that there were more white, middle- time trying to make people feel as com- class people than any other group talk- It sounds like video can become your fortable as they can, talking with them, ing about romantic love. Again, there bestfriend. letting them know it's all right to be were exceptions: some people talked nervous and that I'm nervous, too. Ev- about their children and God or family. It does sound a bit like that. Obvi- erybody's nervous. ously it does not make up for contact \"Romantic\" meaning \"conjugal\"? with human beings. How about your decision not to edit? Is Yes, but it doesn't have to do with sex necessarily. Very few people equated it What influence did your mother's work that an editing decision? with sex. It seemed to have more to do have on you? Well, yes. One thing that I've spent a with movie images-you know , the one person in your life that was special, who It was very important for me growing lot of time working ou t, especially in my was going to make all the difference in up to see her doing work that was ahead journal, is how do you do video where the world, who causes all the pain. of its time and special and that she felt you don't have to edit. I'm interested in Then, a lot of Hispanic people really strongly about, that was taking a the live aspect of it; I'm not interested in seemed to talk a lot about family love lot of risks , like making the first feature going back over what I've done and ma- and mother love; mother love is the big film that was all shot in one room and nipulating that again. For me it wouldn't one, which I almost never heard the was about junkies, The Connection . That make sense to edit the tapes, to go back white, middle-class adults talk about. kind of thing was really impressive to over them and pick out one-liners or the The white adults, a lot of them talked me. We don't work the same way, but I best minute, because what's important about how they didn't like their fami- think we understand each other's work, is the whole experience. Three minutes lies. A lot of Hispanic people talked in a and I respect her struggle and what she turned out to be enough time for people more universal sense of love, more phil- has done. There's something in our fam- to go deeply into what they were into osophical. They were very poetic. ily that goes back to my great-grand- talking about, and it wasn't so long that father, who was an inventor: doing it got really boring. The music was done Were they speaking Spanish or English? things that are new and looking for new because it gave a beginning and an end; Both. With the Love Tapes , if the per- ways of doing things really excite me. the people could hear when the music son has a native language that they're was stopping, and they would wind much more comfortable with than Among the influences on the Love down . speaking pidgin English, I'd rather they Tapes, you mentioned The Hite Report. do it in their own language. Then we I see the tapes like these little three- can subtitle it. Right before the Love Tapes hap- minute art pieces. They all have these A lot of black women especially pened , I read The Hite Report, and I was story lines or logic lines or psychological talked about family and friends and really excited by reading it. Shere Hite lines that, if I chopped them up, would friendship; that was really important. It did something in it that I really believe be lost. If I had been out to make a tape was mothers and daughters and children in a lot, which is that instead of asking that had all these neat quotes about and friends-a lot of easy love, you experts to define and tell us about the love, then I would edit it, but that's not know, love was easier to give-and al- world and life and, in this particular what I'm doing. most no talk about romantic love at all, case, sex, she went around and asked almost no talk about their husbands. It is people what it was they were experienc- In a way you are pursuing a project like a more matriarchal society: the men ing. I thought it was great, and I learned more come and go in it, and women are a lot from it. I feel that I've been taught a August Sander's, the German photogra- very solid. lot of crap by our society. I think it's pher who set out to portray a nation. Do The black men's tapes were incredi- much more interesting at this point to you have thefeeling that at a later date and bly varied. They were the most varied find out how people are really experi- with a later technology you are portraying group: from talking of God to love to encing things, and that's what I did with music-a whole range of things-and a the Love Tapes . I didn't ask experts, I'm America? good woman. just asking people. And I'm not asking Yes, yes, I do. I do feel that. I think Did you have many Asian respondents? them to talk about what love should be, Not that many. A few in California. I'm asking them to talk about how it that these tapes would be so great in the There was one man in New York. He's makes them feel. Sometimes I say to National Portrait Gallery. I see them as a japanese, and he had japanese music them, \"I'm not interested in what you combination of portrait and self-portrait, playing in the background. Instead of think about it or what you've been told a document of these times in America. telling you directly from his own feel- by your parents or the church or what- ings, he does it in a story that he tells that ever. I want you to talk about how you You mentioned at some point that you is so beautiful and moving; it does have experience it.\" I make that as clear as I were struck by what seemed to be univer- to do with him, but it's told in a very removed way, with a different kind of can. sal among your respondents. Do you mean rhythm. You feel like you're seeing a Ifyour participants respond in any way great japanese movie. similarities within groups-age, sex, or How about teenagers and children? they want, what remains for you as an race-or across the entire range of re- Teenagers mostly talked about ro- mantic love. artist? What do you impose on the image? spondents? Regardless ofrace? That I always work with the existing Well, except for those people who Yes, except if they were younger. Pre- teenagers would talk about all sorts of environment is really important. Each think there is no such thing as love- place has its own look. I don't bring there were a few people who said that- lights with me; I use existing light. I do everybody seemed to feel that love was all of this on purpose, and that was one the strongest emotion in the world and of the reasons for choosing to stay with the one necessity for life; that without it black-and-white. If! had gone to color, I people would die; that it was ,the emo- would have had to bring in a great deal of tion they spent most of their time think- extra light, which would have created ing about in either positive or negative ways. Within specific groups certain kinds of love were described. It seemed to me 70
things, like basketball and music and rific. But she is a very caring, kind, warm f1~1 RTS friends; friends are really important. person. Film Music Is How about your oldest people? What is the exhibition history of the Our Forte The oldest people: that was really in- Love Tapes? teresting. It seemed to me that they Exclusive Soundtrack Selections almost went back to being children The first exhibit was in Los Angeles And Limited Editionsl again. A lot of them talked about their at the Los Angeles Institute of Contem- mommies and their daddies and porary Arts, which is the first place they Over 1.000.000 LP'S available: skipped over their spouses almost en- were made; they were exhibited while In-Print and Out-of-Print. an array of tirely. Another interesting thing about they were being made. The next exhibit imports. highly-desired reissues. and the old people, of all the groups, they of them was in The Museum of Modern original casts (on and off Broadway). were the group that had the least fear of Art. I have not particularly shown them making the tapes, the least anxiety in galleries. The Wadsworth Atheneum We offer the finest service about it. They could have talked for in Hartford, Connecticut, showed available - monthly auctions by mail hours; three minutes was really too short them. Also, where I have shown them I (rare. unique titles). the only monthly for them. have tried to make them, because that's Filmusic Newsletter \"Music Gazette\" Once while I was taping, I could tell to me how the piece is supposed to be. that the music was just too loud, that I For YOUR copy of our extensive had to go back in and have the man start They showed once at the American catalog. a sample of \"Music Gazette\" over again. I told him that I was sorry, Center in Paris. Then I just came back ($2 value). and monthly auction. but would he mind doing it again. So he from France, making forty-four love Please Remit $1.00 TODAY TO: did it again, and I saw both tapes, and tapes in Nancy at a festival. A few of they were identical word for word. It was them have shown in Japan. In Canada a RTS, Dept. 19B as if he had been thinking of these series just played at a festival. Right P.O. Box 687 things for years. now, English television is thinking Another thing I really love with the about showing them. The Museum of Costa Mesa. California 92627 tapes is that every one that I see I can Modern Art is circulating the recent identify with. It's like that person is tell- show that I had there. That's a five- (714) 544-0740 Tu-Th 12-4 pm ing another piece for me of what I feel. hour-long show. That show is going to My feeling about it is if you could get play in Germany, I think, in Berlin. FRESH HOT SEND $3 everybody on earth to do this, you'd see VIDEO FOR THE that it's all really one feeling. We are all Will your participation continue? I TO GO! one species-that's the strongest force EVER! that I think I'm left with in terms of the mean, do you feel as if you've created a rJL tapes. monster? Has it taken you over to the point (~=) • where it's hardfor you to do other work? G els \"cmllf s l - \"' a s \"('mill! ' Could anybody make love tapes? [' m Yes, definitely, though I don't see it as thinking of Warhol: as simple as those a monster at all. I love it, and I don't see Movies Unlimited has 'em all: movies looked and as many people as there it as a monster. What's happening now is were who attempted to make Warhol-like that I am not involved in searching out • Hot new titles. Movie classics. Sci·Fi movies, no one really succeeded. places; I have stopped doing that. Peo- ple are coming to me. I do want to do • TV shows· Cartoons· Cult classics I think about this a lot, because I want other things, and I am starting on a new people to be able to use this process. project that I thought I was going to be • Specialty & collector'S items There's something for me in the thought able to really get involved in, but I can't that as an artist I can contribute and have because of the Valentine thing, which is ~D\" t--a,. people utilize what I do, though I think going to take up a tremendous amount that what they need to do is sort of take it of energy. Add an extra $1 for our and change it. What I've seen of the sizzling Adult Video catalog or people who have taken what I've done It does have a life of its own-I seem send $1 for our super Super 8 catalog and tried to duplicate it, it doesn't really to be a facilitator-but the project for work. Now, I think that other people me has always felt like a very organic (catalog fees refundable with first order1 can make love tapes. I have trained peo- thing. Since the first time that I did it, it ple, for instance, assistants, to work with felt like that. I'll never forget that first MOVIES UNLIMITED me, but I don't have very much experi- time. I came back home, and I said, ence of what would happen if I weren't \"My God, what has just happened? The •••••••••••••••••• there overseeing it. hugest thing has just happened,\" and I could see the potential. I called my 6736 Castor Ave.• Phila., Pa, 19149 There was one woman who helped mother on the phone, and I said, \"Do make love tapes at the World Trade you believe what just happened? Can 215·722·8298 Center. She works at a cable TV station you see it?\" in Ohio, and she wanted to bring me out there, but they didn't have any money. I She said, \"Yes, I can see it,\" and I was said, \"Why don't you try it?\" They tried so excited. it, and she sent me some of the tapes they did, and I thought they were ter- It was absolutely one of the highlights of my life. It was like giving birth to a baby or falling in love. I could see the potential was to go all around the globe and to get every single human being on earth to do it. ~i;' 71
Picture Palaces and Movie Man by Elliott Stein and fall of cinemas large and small in a A local firm, Crotch and Son, made pIas- single region of England (principal ter decorations for many of the region's The Picture House in East Anglia by towns: Aldeburgh, Cambridge, Great cinemas. During the Thirties, E.H. Stephen Peart, 180 pp. Terence Dalton Yarmouth, Norwich) from the first pic- Bostock of Bostock and Wombwells Me- Ltd. Lavenham, Suffolk, England, ture show at Gilbert's Modern Circus, nagerie founded the largest East An- £7.95. Norwich, January 1897 (the one-minute glian chain of theaters; its contractors films \"Boxing Kangaroos\" and \"Soldiers were Balls and Sons. Cathedrals of the Movies . A History of Cutting off a Turk's Head\" shared the British Cinemas and Their Audiences by bill with live jugglers and performing I'll never see: the Empire (1913) at David Atwell, 194 pp. The Architec- dogs) up to the less colorful present. Biggleswade, now a factory; the demol- tural Press, London, £12.95. ished Cosy at Burnham Market; the Ernest Ambrose remembers his first Louis Quatorze (1913) at Borleston, de- Movie Palaces. photographs by Ave film: \"I was tempted into a booth by a stroyed during an air raid; the demol- Pildas, text by Lucinda Smith, foreword man who kept shouting: 'Walk up and ished Queens Hall at King's Lynn, by King Vidor, 128 pp. Clarkson N . Pot- see the moving pootigraphs, wonderful opened in 1907 by the Wonderful Ani- ter, N.Y. , $17.95. discovery. ' \" A local paper reports of an mated Picture Company. And to my The Ohio Theatre . edited by Mary Bishop, Bill Knight, Jim Marsico; 144 pp. Available from The Ohio Theatre, 28 E . State St., Columbus, Ohio 43215, $28.50. Architectures de Cinerna by Francis Lacloche, 238 pp. Editions du Moni- teur, 17 Rue d'Uzes , 75002 Paris , France. American Picture Palaces. The Archi- tecture ofFantasy by David Naylor. Van Nostrand Reinhold , $29.95. From the Twenties to the Forties, Surf Theatres' Castro, San Francisco . while the movie palaces prospered, hardly any books were written about early film show: \"This reproduction of deep chagrin I will never set eyes on the them. They did not have to be written life itself... deserves the highest praise, Kinnodrome at Kessingland (demol- about. They were simply there-mag- as the pictures are so clear that the eye is ished in 1976), operated by the eccentric nificent givens of everyday life. While not wearied or the brain confused .\" Everard Wigg, who built this lavish and Ben Hall was writing his pioneering When the Gem (1908) at Great Yar- safe cinema in 1930 with a collapsible study, The Best Remaining Seats mouth opened for \"Electric Vaudeville\" wall which would be activated in the (Bramhall House, 1961), the Roxy, his (continuous film shows), men were re- event of fire to enable the audience to favorite theater, was being demolished. quired to sit on one side of the theater, exit quickly. Peart's book and its pic- In the two decades since its publication, women on the other. At lower-scale cin- tures are some consolation. many of the theaters he documented emas, children without money could have disappeared or been mutilated: gain admission by prod~cing a rabbit • twinned, tripled, piggybacked beyond skin; on Saturdays they were let in for half-price if they sat two to a seat. In the The first comprehensive account of recognition . side boxes, adults, on request, were cin\"ema architecture in Britain was Den- And now, of a sudden, within the last served tea and kippers during the show. nis Sharp's The Picture Palace. published in London in 1969, and two years, as ifby some collective twitch brought out here by Praeger. David in the void, a little regiment of movie theater books has assembled, about enough to take up half a space in a park- ing lot newly created by the wreckers of a Majestic or a Paradise. • Stephen Peart's The Picture House in East Ang/ia is the most modest and sym- pathetic of the lot. It traces the decline 72
Atwell's Cathedrals of the Movies (1980) As much cannot be said for Ave Architectures is the only truly interna- covers much of the same territory as Pildas' mini-cocktail-table color photo tional book of all those under review Sharp, although its author has clearly book, Movie Palaces. It comes with a here: rare pictures of French cinemas done much original research. (For years text by Lucinda Smith that reads largely from all periods are supplemented by it had been accepted that the earliest as a scissor-and-paste job culled from photos of theaters in Belgium, Turkey, purpose-built cinema in England had Hall and other sources. A few of the Germany, Italy, Portugal, and the Gold been the London Biograph, 1905; photos are impressive: the double-page Coast. The neatly designed cover sports Atwell has tumed up three of earlier spread of the Oakland Paramount lobby a good picture taken by Lacloche of S. date.) is outstanding. The pictures are princi- Chalks Lee's swan-shaped deco Loyola pally of details of theaters-vertical in Los Angeles, currently a center for There are sections on the movie pal- signs, marquees, box offices, terrazzos Maharaji cultists. aces of Germany, France, and Scandina- -viewed through a cold high-techy lens via, even a bit on the unfortunately which often informs the subjects with a Lacloche is the only one to have had named Herbert J. Krapp , architect of detached bleak air. They become col- the good sense to include a section on the Jackson in Jackson Heights, the relationship of movie sets to movie Queens. There is a delightful photo of ored plumbing. The feeling is never theater design. He sees the lobby of the London's Grosvenor, its fa<;ade covered conveyed that live audiences enjoyed Hollywood Pantages (1930) as derived by a stylized deco elephant's head. themselves in these places; many seem from Otto Hunte's designs for Fritz There is the good news that the Penulti- more like photo-realist paintings than Lang's 1922 Dr. Mabuse-and he may mate Picture Palace (1910) in Oxford is photographs. be seeing clearly. I like his observation still standing. There is, above all, a su- that the audience at the recent Para- perb chapter on the curious Theodore Columbus must have inflicted some mount, Columbus Circle \"enters this Komisarjevsky, a Russian designer of sort of trauma on Pildas. On pages 91 , submarine through the periscope.\" The Venetian movie palaces in England. 106, 115, and 118, there are pictures French for popcorn turns out to be \"Ie \"Come-and-seduce-me,\" as his name labeled \"Ohio Theatre-Columbus,\" mais eciate. \" was pronounced by ladies of the entre- which are not of that theater. One full deux-guerres London social scene, was page (120) is filled by a picture of an exit Galling and brilliant by turns , this an early success as director of the Mos- sign that bears no label. It is Exit 27-of book should be tidied up, translated , cow State Theater, came to England in the Ohio. indexed-and published here post- 1919 and formed his own company (it haste. included Martita Hunt, Charles In 1978, an entire volume devoted to Laughton, John Gielgud), and began the Ohio was published in celebration of • designing cinemas in 1930. His master- the fiftieth anniversary of Lamb's ba- piece was the Venetian Gothic Granada roque masterpiece in Columbus. The David Naylor's American Picture Pal- at Tooting. T. K., who died in Darien, early years are well-documented in pic- aces contains a generous selection of Connecticut, in 1954, was the greatest ture and text. The subsequent saga photographs, often of unusual theaters: designer of cinema interiors in England, reads like a sketch for a Capra film: in the nutty Holland (1931) in Bellefon- although he held the movies in low es- 1969, with the wrecker's ball scheduled taine, Ohio, whose auditorium is envel- teem and once wrote: \"The cinema to swing, the theater was saved through oped in an imaginary Dutch town; the does not only cater for imbeciles, it the combined efforts of the Columbus KiMo (1927), Albuquerque, where cow breeds them. \" citizenry-society ladies, organ lovers, skulls, lighted from within, are a source architects, business men, boy scouts. In of illumination on the mezzanine prom- Atwell manages to overlay the seri- 1977, it was named a National Historic enade. Many of the color pictures are too ousness of the architectural historian Landmark and is now the home of the murky for comfort. with a touch of Ben Hall's sense of fun . Columbus Symphony and the center of One of his finds has been a set of draw- the Columbus Association for the Per- In addition to the requisite career ings for a 1909 London cinema which forming Arts. The stunner is a two-page pieces on the big boys (Thomas Lamb, indicates that the only way the projec- photo of the marquee which, when John Eberson, George and C. W. Rapp), tionist could reach the booth was pulled out, reveals a four-page color pan- Naylor brings on stage a handful of through a trap door in the gentleman's orama of the great gleaming auditorium. lesser-known theater architects: Tour- lavatory. tellotte and Hummel, Hoffman and • Henon, Krokyn and Rosenstein, and I was once told by an English friend Levy and Klein, whose Marbro (1927) in who knew the doctor of the architect of Francis Lacloche's Architectures de Chicago had \"a golden splendor rivaling one of the more unusual theaters illus- Cinemas is a real salade: a magnificent the Vatican.\" There are good bits of trated in both Sharp and Atwell (a great selection of pictures; a provocative text, lobby lore. The entrance to Grauman's place, still standing, but closed) that it is reflective of a good deal of original Metropolitan (1923), Los Angeles, in the only movie palace ever examined at thinking; a tiny, eyeball-busting type- the Middle Eastern style, contained a length in a medical journal, which fea- face; dozens of typos and hundreds of sphinx with the head of George tured it as \"A Curious Case of Syphilitic cramped footnotes, geographical goofs Washington. A plaque at the base of the Architecture. \" (Lamb's 175th St. is not \"au coeur de sphinx read: \"You cannot speak to us, 0 Harlem\" but in Washington Heights), George Washington, but you can speak In spite of a few bobbles (New York's and a good bibliography. Most infuriat- to God. Ask Him to make us good Capitol was the work of Thomas Lamb, ingly, there is no index. The best bobble Americans. \" not the Rapp brothers; Loew's Paradise, is a section heading on the acronymic the Bronx, dates from 1929, not 1926), Odeon chain: \"Oscar Deutsch Enter- I turned to Naylor's picture of Lamb's this entertaining book is a strong addi- tains Our Country.\" Nation, please- Pythian Temple in Manhattan for the tion to the literature. we don't need a chain ofOdeocs. first time just a few hours after I had gone up to West 70th Street to see what remained of it. The vandals who are 73
converting Lamb's Valley of the Kings by the seat of his pants into box-office bent primarily on creating a profitable fantasy into a condominium have ripped away the fac;ade's rich decorative tile- success. To boot, he ritually regaled product. Hawks scholars will encounter work and are erecting a vast dispropor- tionate thing on the roof. No public each earnest interlocutor with the same little that is new and , of course, the old protest accompanied the savaging of this unique building. or very similar anecdotes about the life combination of entertainment and frus- Naylor's book is shot through with and times of director Howard Hawks. tration. Curiously, though McBride ac- lucid expositive passages-Lamb's treatment of opera boxes, to name but The \"goddam grey fox of Brentwood,\" knowledges Hawks' penchant for one-but this possessor of a degree in architecture from Amherst is no great as John Ford dubbed him, spun out sto- \"repeating and refining\" stories, he does shakes at dates. It is stated that the lobby frieze at the AI Ringling Theater, ries like a smokescreen, talking beside not cite in his selected bibliography a Baraboo, Wisconsin, is a copy \"of the choir gallery of the sacristy in the cathe- or far beyond the point, more often than number of interviews published during dral of Florence, executed in 1671 by Luca della Robbia.\" Della Robbia died not. True to his on-screen caveats, he the last decade in Jump Cut, Take One, in 1482; his cantoria, copied at Baraboo, was executed from 1431 to 1438. It is seemed to view words as a kind oflife (or and Movietone News which contain stated that the foyer of the Chicago Tivoli \"was modeled after the Chapelle identity) insurance, and verbal direct- (sometimes informative) variations on Royale designed by Mansart [sic] for Louis XIV in 1710.\" Jules Hardouin ness as an invitation to target practice. many of the anecdotes included in Mansard, who designed the Versailles Chapelle, died in 1708. Based on my own and others' interview- Hawks on Hawks . (Peter Bogdanovich's This is essentially a useful and attrac- ing experiences with Hawks during the ground-breaking Museum of Modern tive book that covers a great deal of ma- terialleft undocumented by Ben Hall . Seventies, I'd pretty much concluded Art conversations are referenced.) Film Hall's seminal book was reprinted in the code couldn't be broken, at least not students might have welcomed the op- paperback in 1975 (by Clarkson Potter) as The Golden Age of the Movie Palace. to the extent an admirer of his films portunity to compare Hawks' refine- The back-cover blurb boasts of \"more than 275 illustrations in color and black might have desired. ments from interview to interview and and white.\" Not one illustration is in color. @ Thus, it isn't surprising to find that to work from an inclusive rather than an by Kathleen Murphy when Hawks talks in Joseph McBride's exclusive bibliography. Hawks on Hawks by Joseph McBride, Hawks on Hawks, a long interview edited The eight-page introduction to University of Califomia Press, 1982; 200 pages, illustrations. $15.95. Hawks on Hawks pretty much rubber- Franc;ois Truffaut rated Howard stamps the received critical wisdom Hawks \"one of the most intellectual filmmakers in America,\" and so he was. which has accrued since the French dis- His films work eloquently economic var- iations on a primal scenario: man striving covered the director in the Fifties. Miss- to create himself, language, ethics, com- munity, art (or profession, in Hawksian ing are fresh insights, provocative parlance) in an existential vacuum. Like the best of Hemingway's characters, readings, or any serious effort to analyze Hawks people are masters of indirec- tion, behavioral and linguistic disguise, Hawks' in-person style in the light of his the kind of survivalist camouflage that can be manufactured and maintained thematic and stylistic predilections on only by a terrible, perpetual mindful- ness. To the acute frustration and even screen. How does his conversational ar- embarrassment of many a critic-inter- viewer, Howard Hawks in person slyly moring by means of apparent accessibil- detoured intellectual analysis, soft- shoeing and soft-soaping his way out of ity resemble the protective coloration interrogatory comers by claiming he was just an entertaining storyteller who flew utilized by so many of his heroes? What can be made of certain verbal fixations which crop up in interview after inter- Howard Hawks. view-even as do the most ordinary words, often signaling an extraordinary from nine separate conversations held range of meaning, in Hawks films made between 1970 and 1977, what he has to thirty years apart? On another level, say is frequently, almost word for word, what might be inferred by noticing that the series of \"three-cushion\" mono- the director, known for creating some of logues we've come to know and put up the most radically individualistic film with over the years. The familiarity is roles for women, consistently refers to partially due to the fact that portions of Carole Lombard, Frances Farmer, this material have been published previ- Lauren Bacall, et. aI., as \"the girl,\" ously in various film journals and par- rather than by name? tially due to Hawksian promiscuity as a McBride errs when he rather disin- raconteur. genuously remarks: \"Oddly enough, It's difficult to identify the audience when Truffaut suggested to me that Hawks on Hawks will appeal to. Those somebody should do a book on Hawks lacking any great familiarity with the di- comparable to his book on Hitchcock, I rector's work may find it hard going or was then in the process of doing just simply be disinclined to mine Hawks' such a book without realizing it.\" It has sometimes off-puttingly self-aggrandiz- been conceded that probably no amount ing maunderings for the nuggets of sig- of expertise or audacity could have nificance that are there to be discovered. shaken Hawks out of his chosen per- Whether mask or reality, the director's sona, but the queries in Hawks on Hawks insistence on reducing his filmmaking are never designed to discomfit or chal- experience to a level of concreteness oc- lenge Hawks. They certainly lack any of casionally bordering on the willfully sim- the exquisite known-in-the-brain, felt- plistic may confirm the casual reader in in-the-heart wisdom which characterizes his or her belief that Hollywood direc- Truffaut's rich give-and-take with tors are generally an unintelligent lot Hitchcock (no mean master of disguise 74
himself). attribute things. I can't even understand schizophrenia in its failure to concern McBride goes further out on the au- the words that they use in talking about itself (in the introductory remarks) with thorial limb by vastly overselling the why you arrive at such a thing.\" the curious chasm which so frequently content ofthe interview: \"Hawks' anec- It's good that all of this material has opens between the complexity of Ho- dotes often illustrated complex points been collected in one volume under use- ward Hawks' films and the simplicity, at more succinctly than critics are able to ful headings such as \"Working with times running to a kind of baiting sim- do with reams of windy analysis. He was Writers,\" \"The Hawksian Woman,\" pIe-minded ness, of the testimony of the endlessly tractable and informative on \"The Western,\" etc.; it saves the collec- man who made the movies. Chasms can questions of technique and story con- tor of Hawksian lore the trouble of piec- be fertile ground for critical exploration, struction, and his analyses of actors' per- ing together interviews from a half but McBride seems far too intent on sonalities were brilliantly insightful . .. dozen sources. Hawks' anecdotes are as emphasizing the publication of Hawks Listening to Hawks discuss his working entertaining, as sporadically informative on Hawks as a peak experience to make methods was the equivalent of attend- or provocative, as ever, and the book the climb as rigorous and rewarding as it ing a master class in the practical art of does include some heretofore unre- might have been. film direction.\" corded conversation. But Hawks on NOTE: This review is based on reading • Hawks suffers from a kind of critical \"uncorrected proofs.\" NooocwooWd~~rethuH~ks~=============================~ was fun to talk to, or that important points of critical clarification could be Harvard announces the year's best thriller. gleaned from his reminiscences. How- No one in the history of film-making has perfected the ever, McBride's inflated claims are art of the suspense thri Iler as Alfred Hitchcock has. hardly borne out by the evidence in In this fascinating and challenging book, William Hawks on Hawks. The director dead- Rothman offers a close analysis of five most memorable ends discussion about his aversion to Hitchcock films and documents his readings with more flashbacks (\"If you're not good enough than 600 frame enlargements. to tell a story without having flashbacks, The films examined are: The Lodger (1926), Murder! why the hell do you try to tell them?\"), (1930), The Thirty-Nine Steps (1935), Shadow of a Doubt and his adherence to no-nonsense, eye- (1943), and Psycho (1960). level camera positions (\"I hate screwed- Rothman's insights sharpen our appreciation of up camera angles\"). One would be hard Hitchcock's genius, his mastery of suspense, and direc- pressed to find the following comments torial cunning. No one who reads this book will ever view a on John Wayne \"brilliantly insightful\": Hitchcock film the same way again. \"It's always easy to make a picture with Wayne if you've got somebody good for . This is a book which will be cherished by the seriolJs , him to buck up against. Otherwise he cinema student and casual movie buff alike. . ., blows 'em right ofT the screen, and you Harvard Film Studies $27.50 don't get anything.\" Nothing is made in the introduction At your local bookstore or directly from to Hawks on Hawks of the director's noto- rious penchant for styling himself as a Harvard University Press kind of beneficent Svengali who discov- 79 Garden Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts \" ered, schooled, and made a success ofan unusual number of actors and actresses HITCHcock -and, by his account, some directors- without acknowledging that one or two ~~GT~haezeM.WuilrliadmeRroothmuasn of his Trilbys (male and female) had had some previous experience, even reputa- tion, in film work. Particularly in inter- views he gave during the years when he seemed to feel involuntarily exiled from the working film community, Hawks al- most obsessively declared himself nearly everyone's past and present Papa. Parallels with the director's films are in- escapable: what's a Hawksian profes- sional to do when he's deprived of the sustaining context of good work and fel- lowship? But McBride can't be criticized for failing to draw him out on this front. When he asks the director about Truf- faut's notion that Hatari's big-game hunting is a metaphor for communal filmmaking, Hawks plays very dumb: ''The Frenchmen are so funny. They 7S
• Outbreak ofWaugh: Two Views by Pierre Greenfield Brideshead Revisited as well-with one the chief appeal of this Brideshead is the fatal difference. F. Scott Fitzgerald's glorious abandon with which the money When Evelyn Waugh went to Holly- rich were different, not necessarily bet- is put on display. One doesn't enjoy the wood in the late Forties to help turn ter. But Waugh was madly in love with drama so much as the sheer glossiness. Brideshead Revisited into a movie, he his beautiful, doomed, Catholic aristo- Brideshead itself is played by one of was incensed that the MGM brass crats who suffered so gorgeously. What Britain's most beautiful stately homes, wanted to turn his \"novel about God\" surprises is that he couldn't describe Castle Howard, and it never looked into a traditional love story. Yet one can't them so as to make us understand his lovelier. No less ravishing to the eye are blame the moguls. Most readers find the adoration, much less share it. With ev- the Art Deco settings, the period arti- novel's Catholic element its least satis- erything in the telefilm taken from facts, the cigars, the cars, the magnums factory component, for Waugh the Cath- of champagne in the ice buckets, the olic apologist was nowhere near as Anthony Andrews, Diana Quick, caviar and the plover's eggs, the trips to interesting a writer as Waugh the lethal Jeremy Irons in Brideshe;ad Venice and Paris and New York and humorist and all-round sacred monster. Revi Mexico and Morocco. Brideshead Revis- The novel is a maddening mixture of ited makes us dream of what it might be the best and worst of this strange, fasci- Waugh as though it were Holy Writ, like to be rich-really rich. An adoles- nating writer. there is thus inevitably a hole in the cent dream is all it is, of course, but center that nothing can fill. these days such dreams can have the The mammoth telemovie made from sweetest savor. it by Granada Television (at a reputed We can attribute the unusual popular- cost of $11 million) preserves its defects ity of the novel, when published in But what's it supposed to be about? and virtues with almost alarming scrupu- 1945, to the lavishness of its effects. In a The Catholic element is, for most out- lousness. Adaptor John Mortimer and squalid world like postwar Europe, a bit siders, simply baffling-not because directors Michael Lindsay-Hogg and of luscious luxury goes down a treat. the theology presented is too complex, Charles Sturridge have chosen to Now we are again plunged into eco- but because it's too simple-minded. But transcribe the book as nearly as possible, nomic gloom. So why shouldn't a movie the other central theme is also botched. page by page, almost word by word. of Brideshead Revisited be every bit as One side-effect of a very close adapta- Even with some pruning of the novel's popular as the novel was? Beautiful peo- tion is that every divergence from the first-person narration, the film lasts very ple wearing beautiful clothes and spend- original-in text and texture, action and nearly twelve hours. ing pots of money in beautiful acting-becomes important. What surroundings. A cinch for shopgirls of Mortimer and the directors and leading Surely a version lasting less than half every age, gender, and class. Indeed, actors have done is to flatten Waugh's that time could have been arranged. delicate account of friendship into a Brideshead the movie dawdles where nudging homosexual story. Brideshead the novel does not. When the heroes, Charles Ryder (Jeremy In the novel, the love between Irons) and Sebastian Flyte (Anthony An- Charles Ryder and Sebastian Flyte is drews), go to Venice, the movie turns quite emphatically platonic. Though into a see-the-great-art-treasures-of-the- Sebastian descends to a plainly homo- most-triumphant-city travelogue; an sexual relationship with a seedy German English foxhunt, mentioned briefly by in Morocco, we are not intended to read Waugh, becomes an animated calendar any ambiguity into his relationship with portrait with scarlet-scarved gents top- Charles. When Charles assures Sebas- pling off Stubbsian steeds and hoar-frost tian's brother Bridey that the friendship glinting on the country hedgerows. with the German has \"nothing vicious\" Watching this stately pageantry, I knew in it, he is also attempting to assure him- the Americans would love it-and now, self that Sebastian's love for him was the as Brideshead nears the conclusion of its idealized love he thought it was. The immensely popular eleven-week run on whole nature of this love is described PBS's Great Performances series, you very carefully in a speech delivered by know I was right. Lord Marchmain's foreign mistress Cara (Stephane Audran). Young men who A critic for the Monthly Film Bulletin know nothing much of women, she described Chariots ofFire as \"a dream of says, have a tendency to form intense England as The Great Gatsby is a dream but innocent fraternal bonds, which bal- of America.\" The description applies to ance out into deep friendships as matur- 76
ity evolves. Failure to achieve shower anyone who crosses his path with by Lawrence O'Toole relationships of this sort can be fatal, for vague malice, is, in John Gielgud's sexual passion can be experienced with- lovely performance, a most appealing \"Here, at the age of thirty-nine, I be- out being understood or appreciated and old boy; his pained murmur on being gan to feel old,\" reflects the purling, thus can turn to hate; this, Cara ex- corrected about his son's age (\"Twenty? passive voice of Jeremy Irons in plains, is the reason why Sebastian's daz- Is that all you are? It seems ... so much Brideshead Revisited, a foreign country zling parents, Lord Marchmain longer\") is wholly understandable. Jane where the price paid for prolonged (Laurence Olivier) and Lady Teresa Asher, as Charles' wife, is such a sensi- youth is, as Anthony Blanche might (Claire Bloom), have come to lead sepa- tive actress that, even when she's en- have said, the absolute a-a-ambush of rate lives. gaged in rampant social climbing, one age, my dear. The Granada TV series likes her, and Charles' cold-shouldering has taken Waugh's novel of remem- In the telefilm, Charles' and Sebas- seems heartless. brance and the psychological ri tes of Ro- tian's love is presented as exactly what man Catholicism and transcribed it on Waugh took some pains to insist it is not. There are many other good actors vellum rather than bond. Two great the- There is a great deal of male nudity, and demonstrating their skills in Brideshead mes-homosexual sensibility (not nec- a bit of all-male kissing. Then there is Revisited, some at too small a length. essarily incurring homosexual acts) and the Cigarette Metaphor-ah, the legacy That leggy Valkyrie Jenny Runacre, for Roman Catholicism-are depicted in of Now, Voyager! Charles and Sebastian example, has one line as Rex's vampiric detail on a large and changing canvas; are forever igniting their carcinogens paramour, and elsewhere hangs around each is an excess, bought by faith and with the aid of an already-lighted ciga- in the background for a few minutes, dearly paid for. Brideshead's achieve- rette proffered by one to the other. chewing on a cigarette holder. On the ment lies in its ability to keep these two Later, when Sebastian has gone to hell other hand, there's no denying the plea- unruly subjects constantly operative and via Morocco, and Charles has begun go- sure that less well-known players give in emotionally forceful. ing to bed with the sister who so resem- some of the larger supporting roles, es- bles him, Charles and Julia have exactly pecially John Grillo as the oily Oxford The television series is, by default, the same habit. The first time Charles tutor, Samgrass (a near-libelous carica- eminently equipped in following the cir- ever lights a cigarette for Julia, his voice ture of Sir Maurice Bowra) and, in what cuitous routes of the unhurriedly unfold- tells us he experienced \"a thin bat's is arguably the best performance in the ing, complex novel. With the leisure squeak of sexuality,\" so when he per- whole show, Phoebe Nicholls as Corde- afforded it by commercial consider- forms the same service for Sebastian, lia, Sebastian's kid sister. This frump- ations, it enjoys the novel's peripheral what are we to assume? Ahem ... ish, unlovely girl, unlike her siblings in vision and is given the same breathing that her Catholicism makes her \"bird- spaces where meanings, connections, Creating sympathetic or admirable happy,\" is so unconcerned by her lack of and subtleties have ample time to sur- characters was not Evelyn Waugh's the fabled beauty of the Marchmains face and resonate. Brideshead takes ex- forte; it's the monstrous gargoyles who and so uncomplicatedly good, that it is treme advantage of that. I don't think sprang in loathsome splendor from out in her, and not any of the putative leads, the makers of Brideshead, for example, his pen nib. Thus we can respond with a that the moral element of the story truly consciously set about to explore homo- good deal ofamusement to the appalling lies. One rather wonders what such an sexual sensibility, but their fidelity to Rex (Charles Keating), the name- appealing person is doing with such aw- Waugh has led to an unavoidable detour dropping Canadian tycoon and political ful relatives. during their excursion, landing the mover who converts to Catholicism with viewer in Queer Street. as much consideration as if he were se- As the doomed mama, Claire Bloom lecting a new brand of cigar, and to the gives an exact rendering of a lady half- Queer Street-a term introduced by grotesque Boy Mulcaster Oeremy Sin- way between saint and ballbreaker. As Charles Ryder's shrewd old fart of a fa- den) with his muttered imprecations Lord Marchmain, the errant papa whose ther-means to be in a bind, a squeeze, about blacks and bolshies and nancy- main contribution to the story is to die at a tight spot. He employs it in response to boys, and his genius for saying the unconscionable length in the last epi- Charles's whining about being short of wrong thing in the wrong tone to the sode (finally embracing the Catholicism money for his second term at Oxford, wrong person at the wrong moment. he has always despised), Laurence Oli- where he has fallen in love with Sebas- More complex is the treatment of the vier gives yet another shameless grand- tian Flyte-and with the idea of love, outrageously effeminate Anthony standing performance, pure show-off all which Sebastian symbolizes. For Blanche (Nickolas Grace). Berouged the way. Charles it is his first taste of homosexual and stuttering, Anthony parades his sensibility's governing aspect, excess. voice, appearance, and relentless bitch- One could say that the whole of Excess of spirits; the attenuation of ery as badges of a familiar gay stereo- Brideshead Revisited constitutes showing youth and beauty; the desire for desire; type. But he still manages to deliver a off-and, for considerable stretches, do- the adoration of detail. The excesses of few home truths-especially in his last ing it with style and spirit. But \"a story Waugh's novel are its subject matter. scenes, when he casually dismisses a about God\"? No chance. Evelyn Waugh Good Roman Catholic that he was, successful exhibition of Charles' paint- meant to stir our consciences and renew Waugh later apologized for the extrava- ings as \"the most t-t-tewwible t-t- our faith; Messrs. Mortimer, Sturridge, gances of his quill. twipe.\" Wight you awe, Anthony. and Lindsay-Hogg want the viewer to tug his mental forelock and realize with Roman ticized, the excesses of Waugh's inability to make us see a masochistic sigh just how beautiful our Brideshead have produced a remarkable much in Charles makes him less likable betters really are. CompUlsively watch- iconography, accompanied by a score of as a character than various of his oppres- able? You bet. What fusion of Ross trumpets. The first term at Oxford is a sors. Charles' unloving father, popping Hunter weepic;s and The Forsyte Saga up briefly throughout the story to wouldn't be? ~ 77
world of straw boaters, white flannels serted by good looks, cultivating their way to the television screen, and laughter, strawberries and wine attention through an excessive personal- Brideshead doesn't concentrate its atten- taken in the shade, bicycles and billow- ity, neither bride nor groom in the color- tions on the fortunes of family. It em- ing gowns and the rush to seek out love, ful epithalamia of homosexual story and phasizes the Marchmain family's \"that low door in the wall\"-the care- song. The aversive response we have to relationship with an emotional avocation less sins of regained childhood . In some Blanche's bitch-goddess behavior is an- -religion-that alternately rules, respects, Brideshead represents the other example of how seductive ruins, and sustains their lives. The film- acme of the neophyte homosexual's as- Waugh's Arcadia has been shown to be makers stick with their subject and it piration: to be surrounded by youth and and, over dinner, the first indication to takes on an intricacy and intensity en- beauty, part of a shared and exclusive Charles that his newfound, piss-elegant compassing enough to make Sister Mary society, to be, ideally, \"a most amusing world at Oxford is winding up for a big Ignatius' eyeballs bulge. In a format young gentleman\" like Sebastian-to hangover. fraught with the temptation of tangents come upon a diamond-encrusted Izod such tenacity is bracing. alligator. Soon enough, Sebastian will have dis- carded his teddy bear, Aloysius, to be Temptation, redemption, forgive- The halcyon days Charles and Sebas- torn apart by two conflicting mind sets: ness, fear, piety-the wages of Roman tian spend at Brideshead shift to Venice the homosexual's refusal to apologize for Catholic upbringing-hover around the for a stay with Lord Marchmain (played his behavior and the eternal plight of the specific action of a character like spec- without an accent by Laurence Olivier, Catholic, which is to have to explain ters, and the actors seems to have been for which one is endlessly grateful). As himself constantly to God and the rest of directed as such. Because the series these twin Tadzios are slung over each the world. And then, about halfway takes its own sweet time, the actors are other's shoulders in a gondola, tourists in through Brideshead, he all but disap- allowed to develop rhythms to their per- the City of Love, \"drowning in honey,\" pears. Still, his ghost haunts every epi- formances; the Marchmains really do Sebastian has begun to dive deeper into sode. The tensions created by the seem lords and ladies of the manor, set- a decanter of whiskey. As a homosexual homosexual sensibility's pressing upon tled on their turf, never participating in he solicits pleasure; as a Roman Catholic Roman Catholic faith begin flexing their the quick, quizzy statement-reply-re- he feels he must deny it. The relent- muscles; and the series, as well as get- sponse rat-a-tat-tat chat normal for tele- lessly devout and pious Lady March- ting darker, digs deeper into its matter. vision, not to mention certain movies. main cannot understand that Sebastian Watching and listening to Brideshead is is \"ashamed of being unhappy\" -it's Sebastian goes as down-and-out as he restful, as well as involving. Like a good not very Catholic of him, though it may can, taking up with an ex-Foreign Le- book. well be homosexual. gionnaire, the German Kurt (Jonathan Coy), in infested, exotic Morocco. In When the series showed in England, The Venetian episode ends literally their master-slave relationship, the slave Brideshead parties-champagne, and and figuratively with a storm, and it is at Sebastian learns to fuse his homosex- strawberries, and God very well knows this point that objections have been ual's \"ashamed of being unhappy\"-ness what else-were all the rage. Now, voiced about the series: begins well, with Catholic martyrology, turning into Monday evenings at eight here in the falls apart, etc. But I take it to be a Saint Sebastian who hangs out near a colonies, millions of souls remain vigi- measure of the series' success that it has monastery waiting to be admitted. lant by their TV sets, their dance cards so ardently impressed the imagery of Charles, the sponge, a character who is penciled in for weeks on end. Queens Arcadia upon the viewer that the feeling nearly a camera, eventually gets married from Queens (and other locations too) of being let down is so powerful, be- to a determined social butterfly (Jane draw parallels between Anthony cause it is so necessary. It has been ar- Asher), produces two children he Blanche and certain persons to whom gued that the eleven episodes of couldn't care less about, and goes off to they have revanchist leanings. Fact is, Brideshead is a case of staying too long South America to discover an excessive, Brideshead is interesting as a pop arti- for tea, but the length and leisure are florid style in his English-country-gar- fact: nostalgic, luxe, pleasingly clothed , important in showing the slow triumph den art. When he finally finds Sebastian well-traveled, sentimental, intelligent of shadow over the sunlit promise of the -by proxy, in Sebastian's near- -the perfect electronic companion. beginning. lookalike sister Julia (Diana Quick) -Charles' homosexual bent of mind But that is being facile. Brideshead is a Before Venice, a small craft warning meets religion too, and Waugh's vicious fairly inclusive portrait of a specific sen- had arrived in the person of Anthony circle is complete. sibility, which may well be what a large Blanche, a memento mori of homosexual audience, perhaps unconsciously, re- sensibility's childhood's end. Extraordi- If for nothing else, Brideshead would sponds to in the series. At the risk of narily embodied by Nickolas Grace, be remarkable for its behavioral wealth, treading in Deer Hunter territory, it can Blanche is a portrait of the young homo- cast as solidly as Gibraltar and acted with be said that Waugh's work (it and the sexual as a wizened, vicious queen, de- a propriety as ancient as it is effective. series practically being interchangeable) Though the telefilm isn't visually excit- is, in part, a compelling and moving WRITERS! SELL YOUR SCRIPT! ing, the camera noses around every ele- paean to the bond that keeps males at- gantly appointed setting for a telling tached to and affected by each other for FREE DETAilS! detail here and there. Nevertheless, years on end. The statement may be these solid, David Leanish virtues pall partially obscured by palm fronds and so How to typ e an d how to sell your fi lm o r TV scrip l l Auth or next to the emotional sweep of the two remains mysterious. Mystery being the works as P.A. fo r mal o r Holl ywoo d film sturi io an n revE'a l s men's story and the spectacle of the core of fascination, Brideshead. on a lates t info on selling and typ ing script s. Marchmains as \"camels trying to pass small screen in a small room, glides through the eye of a needle. \" along leaving a wake made by an unseen Write: JOSHUA PUBLISHING COMPANY 8033 Suns.t Blvd.. St•. 306A, HolIvwood, Ca. 90046 Unlike other similar sagas that wend rudder.® 78
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o A Czech Film Festival will be held of American Art, Madison Avenue at 10012.212/533-9180. at the University of Oklahoma, March 75th Street, New York NY 10021. 2121 Media Bureau Grants 1981-82, a 26-28. Guests will include Milos For- 570-3633 . man, Ivan Passer, Jan Nemac, and program of the New York State Council Arnost Lustig. Workshops and semi- Women in the Director's Chair is on the Arts, announces the availability nars will be featured as well as screen- a non-profit organization dedicated to of small grants of up to $300 for the ings of Czech classical films and the expansion of women's roles in the presentation of work to the public of American films by Czech directors. film industry. They are now planning New York State (i.e. lecture fees , art- Further information may be obtained \"Short Takes,\" a monthly screening ists' fees , rental of video/audio equip- from The Czech Festival Committee, series of short films of any genre writ- ment , etc.). Grants are given to English Department, The University ten, produced , or directed by women. individuals but must be administered of Oklahoma, Norman OK 73019.405/ For more information on the series, through non-profit institutions with 325-4661. write WITDC, c/o Abby Darrow-Sher- IRS 501c3 tax-exempt status. For ap- man, 1430 West Elmdale, Chicago IL plications and information write: Gre- The Film and Video Department of 60660.3121262-2723. gory Miller, Media Bureau, c/o The the Whitney Museum of American Art Kitchen , 59 Wooster Street, New York announces an exhibition of the work of Independent Cinema Artists & NY 10012. video artist Nam June Paik. To be Producers (lCAP) is seeking film held April 30 through June 27, this will and video productions for the cable Ithaca Video Projects announces a be the most comprehensive exhibition and public television markets. This March 15 deadline for the submission ever devoted to a single video artist non-profit organization, which repre- of independent videQtapes for the and recognizes Paik's contributions to sents film and video artists , offers non- Ithaca Video Festival and international the development of video as an art exclusive distribution contracts and touring exhibition. For information form . Details of the exhibition are returns 75 % of the sales revenue to the contact: Ithaca Video Projects, 328 available from the Whitney Museum producer. For information contact: East State Street, Ithaca NY 14850. ICAP, 625 Broadway, New York NY 607/272-1596. CONTRIBUTORS for McLean' s and The Toronto Globeand Yakir freelances everywhere. David Chute writes on movies and Mail .Andrew Sarns is film critic for the Village Voice and teaches film at ERRATUM rock ' n roll for the Los Angeles Herald- Columbia University. Stephen Schiff David Thomson mentioned Marga- Examiner. Pierre Greenfield is a Brit- is film critic for the Boston Phoenix and ish writer who has contributed to Glamour Magazine . Elliott Stein is a ret Sullavan and Robert Taylor in The Movietone News , Take One and Focus New York-based writer specializing in Mortal Storm in his \"Redtime\" article on Film. ~yron Meisel is a Los film. Mitch Tuchman is senior editor in the January-February 1982 issue. Angeles producer-writer-Iawyer. of the Oral History program at UCLA. They actually appeared together in Kathleen Murphy teaches film at the David Thomson is in San Francisco Three Comrades , another Frank Bor- University of Washington in Seattle. editing his first feature film . Dan zage film. In The Mortal Storm, Sul- New YorkerLawrence O'Toole wri tes lavan's lover is played by James Stewart. PHOTO CREDITS:.The French Film Office: page 59(2). Granada TV:p. 76 (1). Phoro courtesy Charles B. Griffith : p . l(1). Phoro by James Hamilton: p . 18 (1), 19 (1),20 (1),21(3),22 (3),23 (2). Phoro by Sonia Moskowitz: p. 58 (1). Movie Star News: p. 1(1),9 (1), 11 (1), 12 (1), 15 (1) , 27 (1), 28 (1),29 (1), 44 (1),52 (1),54(2), 74 (1). M useum of Modern Art/Film Stills Archive: p. 10(1), 14(1 ). The New York Times: p. 68 (1). Paramount Pictures: p. 35(1), 38(1) , 60 (1). The Public Theatre: p. 2 (1). Surf Theatres: p. 72 (1). T wentieth Centu ry- Fox: p. 36 (1), 38 (1), 40 (1). Uni ted Artisrs: p. 33 (I), 39 (1),54 (1). UA- MGM: p. 16 (1), 33 (1), 44 (1), 45 (1), 46 (1),55 (1) . Universal: p. 33 (I), 37 (1) , 41 (2), 49 (1) , 50 (1),5 1(1), 57 (2). Warner Bros.: p. 1(1),35 (1), 38 (1), 39(1) , 42 (1), 60 (1). Warner-Orion: p . 62 (I). Zoetrope Studios: p. 44 (1 ). PARADISE GARDEN (SCRIPT) IUJ~II~~)X( MFA SUMMER PROGRAM IAYA\\©WII~ \"Young anthropologist experiments ~~IAYA\\~~~ Bard College with mice in distant African laboratory called \"Paradise Garden\" to prove his (P>IIJM POETRY • SCULPTURE· INTERMEDIA theory about evol ution refused by MUSIC. PHOTOGRAPHY scientific institutions. The experiment No true movie lover Will want to be Wi thout this u\",q~ ceramiC works, mice develop like humans phy- MOVIE CAMER A PIN Th IS rare . unusual piece IS destmed to be a FILM MAKING • FICTION • PAINTING sically and culturally . But the high COLLECTOR'S ITEM . Its strea mlined modern shape will compliment productivity for which mice were cho- anything you wear. Look at the se line fea tures. June 28 to August 20,1982 sen becomes a fearful threat for human humans. The theoretic background of •Authentic 3·0 design sculptured in the finest detail. contact: this fiction is so well elaborated in •Glossy black glaze over a red cla y base tor a warm , rich glow. Jacob Grossberg, Director details that the outcome looks highly •Great gift, too! realistic and plausible.\" For further This attractive pm is $5 .50 lor one OR lwo lor JUST $9.50. We MILTON AVERY GRADUATE SCHOOL information, contact DOFSBT Box 414, pay the postage and handlingl Quantity discounts available. Satis· OF THE ARTS CH-2540 Grenchen, Switzerland. laction guaranteed! Ru sh 10: CINEMA ARTISTS. LTD.. 3300 NSR7 Oepl. H·684. Hollywood. FL 3302 t . BARD COLLEGE, FC·1 Annandale-on-Hudson , N.Y. 12504 (914) 758-4105 or 758-6822, ext. 133 80
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